away.
The chairs and the rings are the only tell-tale marks these little
people leave behind them, and they would remove even these were they not
so fond of dancing that they toe it till the very moment of the opening
of the gates. David and I once found a fairy-ring quite warm.

But there is also a way of finding out about the ball before it takes
place. You know the boards which tell at what time the Gardens are to
close to-day. Well, these tricky fairies sometimes slyly change the
board on a ball night, so that it says the Gardens are to close at
six-thirty for instance, instead of at seven. This enables them to get
begun half an hour earlier.

If on such a night we could remain behind in the Gardens, as the famous
Maimie Mannering did, we might see delicious sights, hundreds of
lovely fairies hastening to the ball, the married ones wearing their
wedding-rings round their waists, the gentlemen, all in uniform, holding
up the ladies' trains, and linkmen running in front carrying winter
cherries, which are the fairy-lanterns, the cloakroom where they put
on their silver slippers and get a ticket for their wraps, the flowers
streaming up from the Baby Walk to look on, and always welcome because
they can lend a pin, the supper-table, with Queen Mab at the head of it,
and behind her chair the Lord Chamberlain, who carries a dandelion on
which he blows when Her Majesty wants to know the time.

The table-cloth varies according to the seasons, and in May it is made
of chestnut-blossom. The ways the fairy-servants do is this: The men,
scores of them, climb up the trees and shake the branches, and the
blossom falls like snow. Then the lady servants sweep it together by
whisking their skirts until it is exactly like a table-cloth, and that
is how they get their table-cloth.

They have real glasses and real wine of three kinds, namely, blackthorn
wine, berberris wine, and cowslip wine, and the Queen pours out, but the
bottles are so heavy that she just pretends to pour out. There is bread
and butter to begin with, of the size of a threepenny bit; and cakes to
end with, and they are so small that they have no crumbs. The fairies
sit round on mushrooms, and at first they are very well-behaved and
always cough off the table, and so on, but after a bit they are not so
well-behaved and stick their fingers into the butter, which is got
from the roots of old trees, and the really horrid ones crawl over the
table-cloth chasing sugar