he has remembered a number of
their phrases which I shall tell you some day if I don't forget. He
had heard them in the days when he was a thrush, and though I suggested
to him that perhaps it is really bird language he is remembering, he
says not, for these phrases are about fun and adventures, and the birds
talked of nothing but nest-building. He distinctly remembers that the
birds used to go from spot to spot like ladies at shop windows, looking
at the different nests and saying, 'Not my colour, my dear,' and 'How
would that do with a soft lining?' and 'But will it wear?' and 'What
hideous trimming!' and so on.

[Illustration: These tricky fairies sometimes slyly change the board on
a ball night]

The fairies are exquisite dancers, and that is why one of the first
things the baby does is to sign to you to dance to him and then to cry
when you do it. They hold their great balls in the open air, in what
is called a fairy ring. For weeks afterwards you can see the ring on
the grass. It is not there when they begin, but they make it by
waltzing round and round. Sometimes you will find mushrooms inside the
ring, and these are fairy chairs that the servants have forgotten to
clear away. The chairs and the rings are the only tell-tale marks
these little people leave behind them, and they would remove even these
were they not so fond of dancing that they toe it till the very moment
of the opening of the gates. David and I once found a fairy ring quite
warm.

But there is also a way of finding out about the ball before it takes
place. You know the boards which tell at what time the Gardens are to
close to-day. Well, these tricky fairies sometimes slyly change the
board on a ball night, so that it says the Gardens are to close at
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-ta