had just
time to hide from them by bending her knees and holding out her arms
and pretending to be a garden chair. There were six horsemen in front
and six behind; in the middle walked a prim lady wearing a long train
held up by two pages, and on the train, as if it were a couch, reclined
a lovely girl, for in this way do aristocratic fairies travel about.
She was dressed in golden rain, but the most enviable part of her was
her neck, which was blue in colour and of a velvet texture, and of
course showed off her diamond necklace as no white throat could have
glorified it. The high-born fairies obtain this admired effect by
pricking their skin, which lets the blue blood come through and dye
them, and you cannot imagine anything so dazzling unless you have seen
the ladies' busts in the jewellers' windows.

Maimie also noticed that the whole cavalcade seemed to be in a passion,
tilting their noses higher than it can be safe for even fairies to tilt
them, and she concluded that this must be another case in which the
doctor had said, 'Cold, quite cold.'

[Illustration: An elderberry hobbled across the walk, and stood
chatting with some young quinces]

Well, she followed the ribbon to a place where it became a bridge over
a dry puddle into which another fairy had fallen and been unable to
climb out. At first this little damsel was afraid of Maimie, who most
kindly went to her aid, but soon she sat in her hand chatting gaily and
explaining that her name was Brownie, and that though only a poor
street singer she was on her way to the ball to see if the Duke would
have her.

'Of course,' she said, 'I am rather plain,' and this made Maimie
uncomfortable, for indeed the simple little creature was almost quite
plain for a fairy.

It was difficult to know what to reply.

'I see you think I have no chance,' Brownie said falteringly.

'I don't say that,' Maimie answered politely; 'of course your face is
just a tiny bit homely, but----' Really it was quite awkward for her.

Fortunately she remembered about her father and the bazaar. He had
gone to a fashionable bazaar where all the most beautiful ladies in
London were on view for half a crown the second day, but on his return
home, instead of being dissatisfied with Maimie's mother, he had said,
'You can't think, my dear, what a relief it is to see a homely face
again.'

Maimie repeated this story, and it fortified Brownie tremendously,
indeed she had no longer the sl