, 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 her, "they will mischief you, stab you to death or compel you
to nurse their children or turn you into something tedious, like an
evergreen oak." As they said this they looked with affected pity at an
evergreen oak, for in winter they are very envious of the evergreens.

"Oh, la!" replied the oak bitingly, "how deliciously cosy it is to stand
here buttoned to the neck and watch you poor naked creatures shivering!"

This made them sulky though they had really brought it on themselves,
and they drew for Maimie a very gloomy picture of the perils that faced
her if she insisted on going to the ball.

She learned from a purple filbert that the court was not in its usual
good temper at present, the cause being the tantalising heart of the
Duke of Christmas Daisies. He was an Oriental fairy, very poorly of a
dreadful complaint, namely, inability to love, and though he had tried
many ladies in many lands he could not fall in love with one of them.
Queen Mab, who rules in the Gardens, had been confident that her girls
would bewitch him, but alas, his heart, the doctor said, remained cold.
This rather irritating doctor, who was his private physician, felt the
Duke's heart immediately after any lady was presented, and then always
shook his bald head and murmured, "Cold, quite cold!" Naturally Queen
Mab felt disgraced, and first she tried the effect of ordering the court
into tears for nine minutes, and then she blamed the Cupids and decreed
that they should wear fools' caps until they thawed the Duke's frozen
heart.

"How I should love to see the Cupids in their dear little fools' caps!"
Maimie cried, and away she ran to look for them very recklessly, for the
Cupids hate to be laughed at.

It is always easy to discover where a fairies' ball is being held,
as ribbons are stretched between it and all the populous parts of the
Gardens, on which those invited may walk to the dance without wetting
their pumps. This night the ribbons were red and looked very pretty on
the snow.

Maimie walked alongside one of them for some distance without meeting
anybody, but at last she saw a fai