Much Ado About Something. C. E. Lawrence

thereby hangs this tale.

      One word from the water-fairy was enough to release Bim from his persecutors, and to send them hurriedly to work again--till all preparation was ended and the Violet Valley was ready for rejoicing.

      "Gnome," said the nymph, "you must be young as spring-time, or you would not have come so far and arrived so late. You are, I see, from the Land of the Wild Rose. So was I. So is June--our June. You shall be favoured. Lie under that dock-leaf; keep still and take rest. You shall see the best of the wonders. Lucky gnome!"

      Bim obeyed, creeping to the hiding-place and lying there, resting, his eyes alight, as quietly as a mouse with suspicions.

      The gnomes, their business well ended, ran to points of vantage. They clambered along boughs, clung to tree-creepers and shrubbery, like blobs of living fruit. Cross-legged they perched on mounds, whistling, singing, playing impish pranks, chaffing and chiding one another, in all the happiness of easy idleness. They were the jolliest mob in Fairyland that night. There was not a grumble in the whole assembly.

      Then the fairies began to arrive.

      From here and there, like musical snowflakes, they fell, flying down from the skies. They sparkled like gems, their wands were pointed with brilliance, their wings shone with iridescence, their garments were spangled gossamer. As each elf-knight alighted, he folded his wings and marched, with lance or slender sword upraised, to an appointed place, and stood there attentive, waiting, while in myriad gnome-voices the heroes were acclaimed. As every gentle fairy came to earth, she tripped or lightly flew over the dancing-ground and sat or reclined among the flowers. The Violet Valley was thronged with a thousand pictures of loveliness and enchantment.

      All the while the gathering proceeded they and the fairies were singing a world-old fairy-song. The bells of Elfland musically jangled.

      Bim and the stars were delighted. So was the moon. Fairy horns and trumpets pealed: a fanfare of welcome rang with echoes over the higher-land grasses. For here are the royalties!

      A procession worth seeing slowly approached and passed. The pride and panoply of mortal pageantry is tinsel and crudeness in comparison with what the fairies can do.

      Leading came a bodyguard of gnomes, looking quaint and important in their warlike furniture. Their round faces, wearing expressions of tremendous seriousness, their goggle-eyes, and legs, some spindle, others bandy as half-way hoops, gave a sort of pantomime poetry to the proceedings.

      "Shiar-shiar-shiar!" shouted their commander in his best militarese.

      They halted, turned inwards in two long lines, stepped backwards, leaving a generous space between, and shuffled into comparative exactness of places. They were ranged in companies, according to colour, the pride of position belonging to the sky-blue and grass-green companies.

      Following came the flower of fairy chivalry. Knights, whose duty it is to control and imprison the dragons which long ages ago terrified and destroyed humanity, passed along, proudly cheered. Down into fiery depths of earth these happy warriors go, and there, with infinite courage, flashing swords and magic spears, do battle with and awe the flame-breathing furies, preventing their escape to earth, where they would wreak mischief, work havoc, and destroy. Fortunate for us--if only we knew it--that we have the fairies to rid us of these monsters and keep them in restraint. Banish the elves from our imaginings and many hidden horrors would rise again. The old forgotten terrors and a million uglinesses which ever threaten us would resume their evil reigns. Banish the elves, indeed!

      There were knights tried by all manners of adventure, thousand-year-old young heroes whose efforts always help in the battle of right against wrong. They are the joyous chevaliers. The fairies are bright, as their services have been beneficent. The best of the warriors are as dazzling as sunlight at noontide; and as the knights marched in inverse order to their prowess and worth, the most meritorious and honourable last, the procession became brighter and brighter as it progressed, till only elf-eyes could have endured its absolute brilliancy. It was as a rippling river of light, travelling through fields of melody.

      Bim, to whom all this was a magnificent dream, trembled with excitement and awe. He had heard tales of majestic doings, told by gnomes who had made adventures and seen; but nothing before had sounded so fine as the mere shadow of this. He lay in his burrow, snug; and repeatedly pinched his leg to remind himself of his wonderful good luck.

      He saw the knights group themselves in a wide semicircle round a double-throne, gem-built and golden, made by moonbeams and magic out of a nest of wild-growth. Jack o' Lantern, Will o' the Wisp, and their shivering green company kept guard about it.

      Goblins gathered on a poplar-tree.

      Then after an interval came perfection at its best, sweetness in all its qualities, loveliness beyond adjectives--the fairies who watch the flowers in their building, and tend them that they may give generously of their treasures in scent, colour and brightness; who teach birds music and win from them their finest songs; who carry day-dreams to those who require them--they only bring some of the dreams of night; who help Santa Claus during his Christmas mission; who put hopes in the hearts of the weary. They flew slowly, on fluttering wings, just over the grass: the beads of dew beneath glistening sharply, a thousand thousand points, reflections. Last of that chapter of the marvellous procession came one whom the lookers-on acclaimed with ardour--the heroine of that silver night.

      "June! June! June!"

      In her honour all this rejoicing was made. The great event of that calendar night was to be the crowning of June.

      Then with new trumpetings came Oberon and Titania, the most puissant of kings and queens; whose realms and governance extend from the depths beneath, where the brownies in their fire-shops labour and create, to the high-built hidden palaces of the clouds. All castles in the air are in the kingdom of Oberon. Remember that! The royalties of Fairyland are royal indeed.

      They were accompanied by an escort of princes and princesses, of knights, elves, and gnomes; until the procession ended.

      Oberon and his queen sat on the double throne. He raised his sceptre in signal; the revels began. Many of the fairies who had been waiting, thereupon ran to the dancing-green, and on wings and feet as light and graceful as moonbeams on flowing water, danced. It was a vision of loveliness, the perfect poetry of music and motion. And so it went on and on, a kind of dream and of worship, till every one of the fairies had sung and danced her share.

      All the while there was the singing of elf-songs, to an accompaniment of nightingale voices, and joyous feasting on honeyed nectar and cates, the produce of fairy kitchens.

      The moon drifted along, jealous of the passing clouds which occasionally veiled her view, watching, and, from her loneliness, rejoicing with the fairies in their joy.

      Till Oberon arose. The birds ceased their songs. An owl hooted five times. Bim, forgetting caution, came boldly out of his hiding-place, the better to watch. The king raised an opal cup and gave the word:

      "June!"

      Every voice in Fairyland echoed him. The woods repeated the name:

      "June! June! June!"

      CHAPTER II

      THE MADNESS OF JUNE

      Throughout the revels June was sitting but three hand's-breadth distance from Bim, so that he--who is our chief authority for these pages of history--better than anyone else could see, hear, and know all that happened in Fairyland on that very, very young May morning.

      June had been sitting there smiling, enjoying herself supremely. It was hard for her to believe that this banquet of sheer delight was entirely to her honour. Even Oberon, Titania, and those others whose names are as immortal as the passing pages of the books of humankind can make them, were there in a new relation--her subjects for the time being.

      The crowning was the only event which remained undone: it was the culmination of the revels, and would not happen until the cock which crows in the last of the morning darkness had duly squawked and shrilled.

      Every year in Elfland the fairy credited with