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.

"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
out and watch their sheep. The princesses jumped up from their straw