The children all went to bed readily enough, they were so very
tired, even though they had to go in this strange array. All but the
fairies--they danced and pirouetted and would not be still.

[Illustration: THEIR PARENTS STARED IN GREAT DISTRESS]

"We want to swing on the blades of grass," they kept saying, "and play
hide-and-seek in the lily-cups, and take a nap between the leaves of
the roses."

The poor charwomen and coal-heavers, whose children the fairies were
for the most part, stared at them in great distress. They did not know
what to do with these radiant, frisky little creatures into which
their Johnnys and their Pollys and Betseys were so suddenly
transformed. But the fairies went to bed quietly enough when daylight
came, and were soon fast asleep.

There was no further trouble till twelve o'clock, when all the
children woke up. Then a great wave of alarm spread over the city. Not
one of the costumes would come off then. The buttons buttoned as fast
as they were unbuttoned; the pins quilted themselves in as fast as
they were pulled out; and the strings, flew round like lightning and
twisted themselves into bow-knots as fast as they were untied.

And that was not the worst of it; every one of the children seemed to
have become, in reality, the character which he or she had assumed.

The Mayor's daughter declared she was going to tend her geese out in
the pasture, and the shepherdesses sprang out of their little beds of
down, throwing aside their silken quilts, and cried that they must go