hat escaped
were running around and calling on the Queen to help them rescue their
brothers.

"It is all your fault," they told her. "If you had asked the Gnomes to
your party this would not have happened. Now you must help us to get
our brothers out of the power of those bad Gnomes.

"What shall I do?" asked the poor Queen. She felt that her party had
been a failure and thought if she had asked the Gnomes it could not
have been worse.

Just then a Goblin came running toward them. He had been sent by the
Gnomes. They told him to say that his brothers would all be held
prisoners until the Fairies sent them all the ice cream they wanted.

The Fairies and the Goblins hurried to the kitchen in the hollow, but
it was empty. The squirrels and the rabbits had hurried off when they
felt the frosty air and saw everything turning brown.

"What is to be done?" asked the Goblins, "You ought to help us," they
told the Queen again. "If we had not come to your party we should not
have gotten into trouble."

The Queen could not resist replying to this remark the second time.
"If your brothers and you had not climbed on the table, but kept your
seats, as well-behaved Goblins should, you would not have been in need
of help.

"We must go to work," she said to her Fairies. "Fold your wings and
pin up your skirts. We must make ice cream for those wicked Gnomes."

They worked all night, and just before it was light the Goblins carried
ice cream in nut shells to the rocks of the Gnomes, and by and by the
captured Goblins came out and joined their comrades.

"We lost our supper," said the Goblins to the Fairies, "and you should
give us our breakfast. We are hungry. If it had not been for your
party we should not have lost our supper."

This was more than the poor tired Queen and her Fairies could bear.
They took their wands from under their wings and, waving them, they
flew toward the Gnomes.

Little sparks darted from the wands, and every time a spark touched a
Goblin it left a little red mark, and at the same time it pricked them.

Such tumbling and scampering you never saw as the Goblins tried to get
away, and when a Goblin that had a red spot on his face meets a Fairy
he hides or runs, for he knows that she will point him out as one of
the greedy Goblins who tried to make the Fairies cook their breakfast
for them.

THE LITTLE CHINA SHEPHERDESS

[Illustration: The China Shepherdess]

On the parlor mantel