s were the sticks that are tied to young trees and
shrubs. They were quite familiar objects to Maimie, but she had never
known what they were for until to-night.

She peeped up the walk and saw her first fairy. He was a street boy
fairy who was running up the walk closing the weeping trees. The way
he did it was this, he pressed a spring in the trunk and they shut
like umbrellas, deluging the little plants beneath with snow. "Oh, you
naughty, naughty child!" Maimie cried indignantly, for she knew what it
was to have a dripping umbrella about your ears.

Fortunately the mischievous fellow was out of earshot, but the
chrysanthemums heard her, and they all said so pointedly "Hoity-toity,
what is this?" that she had to come out and show herself. Then the whole
vegetable kingdom was rather puzzled what to do.

"Of course it is no affair of ours," a spindle tree said after they had
whispered together, "but you know quite well you ought not to be here,
and perhaps our duty is to report you to the fairies; what do you think
yourself?"

"I think you should not," Maimie replied, which so perplexed them that
they said petulantly there was no arguing with her. "I wouldn't ask it
of you," she assured them, "if I thought it was wrong," and of
course after this they could not well carry tales. They then said,
"Well-a-day," and "Such is life!" for they can be frightfully sarcastic,
but she felt sorry for those of them who had no crutches, and she said
good-naturedly, "Before I go to the fairies' ball, I should like to take
you for a walk one at a time; you can lean on me, you know."

At this they clapped their hands, and she escorted them up to the Baby
Walk and back again, one at a time, putting an arm or a finger round
the very frail, setting their leg right when it got too ridiculous, and
treating the foreign ones quite as courteously as the English, though
she could not understand a word they said.

They behaved well on the whole, though some whimpered that she had not
taken them as far as she took Nancy or Grace or Dorothy, and others
jagged her, but it was quite unintentional, and she was too much of a
lady to cry out. So much walking tired her and she was anxious to be off
to the ball, but she no longer felt afraid. The reason she felt no more
fear was that it was now night-time, and in the dark, you remember,
Maimie was always rather strange.

They were now loath to let her go, for, "If the fairies see you," they
warned