Now, alas! it was absolutely finished.

Oh, dear no!

'Gracious me!' cried a brass manufacturer, 'there's no handle on the
door,' and he put one on.

An ironmonger added a scraper, and an old lady ran up with a door-mat.
Carpenters arrived with a water-butt, and the painters insisted on
painting it.

Finished at last!

'Finished! How can it be finished,' the plumber demanded scornfully,
'before hot and cold are put in,' and he put in hot and cold. Then an
army of gardeners arrived with fairy carts and spades and seeds and
bulbs and forcing-houses, and soon they had a flower-garden to the
right of the verandah, and a vegetable garden to the left, and roses
and clematis on the walls of the house, and in less time than five
minutes all these dear things were in full bloom.

Oh, how beautiful the little house was now! But it was at last
finished true as true, and they had to leave it and return to the
dance. They all kissed their hands to it as they went away, and the
last to go was Brownie. She stayed a moment behind the others to drop
a pleasant dream down the chimney.

All through the night the exquisite little house stood there in the
Figs taking care of Maimie, and she never knew. She slept until the
dream was quite finished, and woke feeling deliciously cosy just as
morning was breaking from its egg, and then she almost fell asleep
again, and then she called out, 'Tony,' for she thought she was at home
in the nursery. As Tony made no answer she sat up, whereupon her head
hit the roof, and it opened like the lid of a box, and to her
bewilderment she saw all around her the Kensington Gardens lying deep
in snow. As she was not in the nursery she wondered whether this was
really herself, so she pinched her cheeks, and then she knew it was
herself, and this reminded her that she was in the middle of a great
adventure. She remembered now everything that had happened to her from
the closing of the gates up to her running away from the fairies, but
however, she asked herself, had she got into this funny place? She
stepped out by the roof, right over the garden, and then she saw the
dear house in which she had passed the night. It so entranced her that
she could think of nothing else.

'O you darling! O you sweet! O you love!' she cried.

Perhaps a human voice frightened the little house, or maybe it now knew
that its work was done, for no sooner had Maimie spoken than it began
to grow smaller; it s