babyhood, which it is a great pity you
can't write down, for gradually you forget, and I have heard of children
who declared that they had never once seen a fairy. Very likely if they
said this in the Kensington Gardens, they were standing looking at a
fairy all the time. The reason they were cheated was that she pretended
to be something else. This is one of their best tricks. They usually
pretend to be flowers, because the court sits in the Fairies' Basin,
and there are so many flowers there, and all along the Baby Walk, that
a flower is the thing least likely to attract attention. They dress
exactly like flowers, and change with the seasons, putting on white when
lilies are in and blue for blue-bells, and so on. They like crocus and
hyacinth time best of all, as they are partial to a bit of colour, but
tulips (except white ones, which are the fairy-cradles) they consider
garish, and they sometimes put off dressing like tulips for days, so
that the beginning of the tulip weeks is almost the best time to catch
them.

When they think you are not looking they skip along pretty lively, but
if you look and they fear there is no time to hide, they stand quite
still, pretending to be flowers. Then, after you have passed without
knowing that they were fairies, they rush home and tell their mothers
they have had such an adventure. The Fairy Basin, you remember, is all
covered with ground-ivy (from which they make their castor-oil), with
flowers growing in it here and there. Most of them really are flowers,
but some of them are fairies. You never can be sure of them, but a good
plan is to walk by looking the other way, and then turn round sharply.
Another good plan, which David and I sometimes follow, is to stare them
down. After a long time they can't help winking, and then you know for
certain that they are fairies.

There are also numbers of them along the Baby Walk, which is a
famous gentle place, as spots frequented by fairies are called. Once
twenty-four of them had an extraordinary adventure. They were a girls'
school out for a walk with the governess, and all wearing hyacinth
gowns, when she suddenly put her finger to her mouth, and then they
all stood still on an empty bed and pretended to be hyacinths.
Unfortunately, what the governess had heard was two gardeners coming to
plant new flowers in that very bed. They were wheeling a handcart with
the flowers in it, and were quite surprised to find the bed occupied.
"Pit