six-thirty for instance, instead of at seven. This enables them to
get begun half an hour earlier.

If on such a night we could remain behind in the Gardens, as the
famous Maimie Mannering did, we might see delicious sights, hundreds
of lovely fairies hastening to the ball, the married ones wearing
their wedding-rings round their waists, the gentlemen, all in uniform,
holding up the ladies' trains, and linkmen running in front carrying
winter cherries, which are the fairy-lanterns, the cloakroom where
they put on their silver slippers and get a ticket for their wraps,
the flowers streaming up from the Baby Walk to look on, and always
welcome because they can lend a pin, the supper-table, with Queen Mab
at the head of it, and behind her chair the Lord Chamberlain, who
carries a dandelion on which he blows when Her Majesty wants to know
the time.

The table-cloth varies according to the seasons, and in May it is made
of chestnut-blossom. The way the fairy-servants do is this: The men,
scores of them, climb up the trees and shake the branches, and the
blossom falls like snow. Then the lady servants sweep it together by
whisking their skirts until it is exactly like a table-cloth, and that
is how they get their table-cloth.

They have real glasses and real wine of three kinds, namely,
blackthorn wine, berberris wine, and cowslip wine, and the Queen pours
out, but the bottles are so heavy that she just pretends to pour out.
There is bread and butter to begin with, of the size of a threepenny
bit; and cakes to end with, and they are so small that they have no
crumbs. The fairies sit round on mushrooms, and at first they are
very well-behaved and always cough off the table, and so on, but after