when they found they could not dance they all tumbled down in a
heap and cried instead of laughing and Lady Patsy lay with her arms
round Peter Piper's neck.

Now here is where I come in again--Queen Crosspatch--who is telling
you this story. I always come in just at the nick of time when
people like the Racketty-Packettys are in trouble. I walked in at
seven o'clock.

"Get up off the floor," I said to them all and they got up and
stared at me. They actually thought I did not know what had
happened.

"A little girl Princess is coming this morning," said Peter Piper,
and our house is going to be burned over our heads. This is the end
of Racketty-Packetty House."

"No, it isn't!" I said. "You leave this to me. I told the Princess
to come here, though she doesn't know it in the least."

A whole army of my Working Fairies began to swarm in at the nursery
window. The nurse was working very hard to put things in order and
she had not sense enough to see Fairies at all. So she did not see
mine, though there were hundreds of them. As soon as she made one
corner tidy, they ran after her and made it untidy. They held her
back by her dress and hung and swung on her apron until she could
scarcely move and kept wondering why she was so slow. She could not
make the nursery tidy and she was so flurried she forgot all about
Racketty-Packetty House again--especially as my Working Fairies
pushed the arm-chair close up to it so that it was quite hidden.