he was now become so wheedling and she so
mysterious was (in brief) that they knew they were about to be sent to
bed. It was then that Maimie was terrible. Tony entreated her not to do
it to-night, and the mother and their coloured nurse threatened her, but
Maimie merely smiled her agitating smile. And by-and-by when they were
alone with their night-light she would start up in bed crying "Hsh! what
was that?" Tony beseeches her! "It was nothing--don't, Maimie, don't!"
and pulls the sheet over his head. "It is coming nearer!" she cries;
"Oh, look at it, Tony! It is feeling your bed with its horns--it is
boring for you, oh, Tony, oh!" and she desists not until he rushes
downstairs in his combinations, screeching. When they came up to whip
Maimie they usually found her sleeping tranquilly, not shamming, you
know, but really sleeping, and looking like the sweetest little angel,
which seems to me to make it almost worse.

But of course it was daytime when they were in the Gardens, and then
Tony did most of the talking. You could gather from his talk that he
was a very brave boy, and no one was so proud of it as Maimie. She would
have loved to have a ticket on her saying that she was his sister. And
at no time did she admire him more than when he told her, as he often
did with splendid firmness, that one day he meant to remain behind in
the Gardens after the gates were closed.

"Oh, Tony," she would say, with awful respect, "but the fairies will be
so angry!"

"I daresay," replied Tony, carelessly.

"Perhaps," she said, thrilling, "Peter Pan will give you a sail in his
boat!"

"I shall make him," replied Tony; no wonder she was proud of him.

But they should not have talked so loudly, for one day they were
overheard by a fairy who had been gathering skeleton leaves, from which
the little people weave their summer curtains, and after that Tony was a
marked boy. They loosened the rails before he sat on them, so that down
he came on the back of his head; they tripped him up by catching his
bootlace and bribed the ducks to sink his boat. Nearly all the nasty
accidents you meet with in the Gardens occur because the fairies have
taken an ill-will to you, and so it behoves you to be careful what you
say about them.

Maimie was one of the kind who like to fix a day for doing things,
but Tony was not that kind, and when she asked him which day he was to
remain behind in the Gardens after Lock-out he merely replied, "Just
som