Their play went beautifully. Dan remembered all his parts--Puck, Bottom,
and the three Fairies--and Una never forgot a word of Titania--not even
the difficult piece where she tells the Fairies how to feed Bottom with
'apricocks, green figs, and dewberries', and all the lines end in 'ies'.
They were both so pleased that they acted it three times over from
beginning to end before they sat down in the unthistly centre of the
Ring to eat eggs and Bath Olivers. This was when they heard a whistle
among the alders on the bank, and they jumped.

The bushes parted. In the very spot where Dan had stood as Puck they saw
a small, brown, broad-shouldered, pointy-eared person with a snub nose,
slanting blue eyes, and a grin that ran right across his freckled face.
He shaded his forehead as though he were watching Quince, Snout, Bottom,
and the others rehearsing _Pyramus and Thisbe_, and, in a voice as deep
as Three Cows asking to be milked, he began:

'What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here,
So near the cradle of our fairy Queen?'

He stopped, hollowed one hand round his ear, and, with a wicked twinkle
in his eye, went on:

'What, a play toward? I'll be auditor;
An actor, too, perhaps, if I see cause.'

The children looked and gasped. The small thing--he was no taller than
Dan's shoulder--stepped quietly into the Ring.

'I'm rather out of practice,' said he; 'but that's the way my part ought
to be played.'