attention. They dress exactly like flowers, and change with the
seasons, putting on white when lilies are in and blue for blue-bells,
and so on. They like crocus and hyacinth time best of all, as they
are partial to a bit of colour, but tulips (except white ones, which
are the fairy-cradles) they consider garish, and they sometimes put
off dressing like tulips for days, so that the beginning of the tulip
weeks is almost the best time to catch them.

When they think you are not looking they skip along pretty lively, but
if you look and they fear there is no time to hide, they stand quite
still, pretending to be flowers. Then, after you have passed without
knowing that they were fairies, they rush home and tell their mothers
they have had such an adventure. The Fairy Basin, you remember, is
all covered with ground-ivy (from which they make their castor-oil),
with flowers growing in it here and there. Most of them really are
flowers, but some of them are fairies. You never can be sure of them,
but a good plan is to walk by looking the other way, and then turn
round sharply. Another good plan, which David and I sometimes follow,
is to stare them down. After a long time they can't help winking, and
then you know for certain that they are fairies.

There are also numbers of them along the Baby Walk, which is a famous
gentle place, as spots frequented by fairies are called. Once
twenty-four of them had an extraordinary adventure. They were a
girls' school out for a walk with the governess, and all wearing
hyacinth gowns, when she suddenly put her finger to her mouth, and
then they all stood still on an empty bed and pretended to be
hyacinths. Unfortunately, what the governess had heard was two
gardeners coming to plant new flowers in that very bed. They were
wheeling a handcart with flowers in it, and were quite surprised to