no more fear was that it was now night-time, and in the dark, you
remember, Maimie was always rather strange.

They were now loath to let her go, for, "If the fairies see you," they
warned her, "they will mischief you, stab you to death or compel you
to nurse their children or turn you into something tedious, like an
evergreen oak." As they said this they looked with affected pity at
an evergreen oak, for in winter they are very envious of the
evergreens.

"Oh, la!" replied the oak bitingly, "how deliciously cosy it is to
stand here buttoned to the neck and watch you poor naked creatures
shivering!"

This made them sulky though they had really brought it on themselves,
and they drew for Maimie a very gloomy picture of the perils that
faced her if she insisted on going to the ball.

She learned from a purple filbert that the court was not in its usual
good temper at present, the cause being the tantalising heart of the
Duke of Christmas Daisies. He was an Oriental fairy, very poorly of a
dreadful complaint, namely, inability to love, and though he had tried
many ladies in many lands he could not fall in love with one of them.
Queen Mab, who rules in the Gardens, had been confident that her girls
would bewitch him, but alas, his heart, the doctor said, remained
cold. This rather irritating doctor, who was his private physician,
felt the Duke's heart immediately after any lady was presented, and
then always shook his bald head and murmured, "Cold, quite cold!"
Naturally Queen Mab felt disgraced, and first she tried the effect of
ordering the court into tears for nine minutes, and then she blamed