She crept forward until
she was quite near it, and then she peeped from behind a tree.
The light, which was as high as your head above the ground, was
composed of myriads of glow-worms all holding on to each other, and so
forming a dazzling canopy over the fairy ring. There were thousands
of little people looking on, but they were in shadow and drab in
colour compared to the glorious creatures within that luminous circle
who were so bewilderingly bright that Maimie had to wink hard all the
time she looked at them.
It was amazing and even irritating to her that the Duke of Christmas
Daisies should be able to keep out of love for a moment: yet out of
love his dusky grace still was: you could see it by the shamed looks
of the Queen and court (though they pretended not to care), by the way
darling ladies brought forward for his approval burst into tears as
they were told to pass on, and by his own most dreary face.
Maimie could also see the pompous doctor feeling the Duke's heart and
hear him give utterance to his parrot cry, and she was particularly
sorry for the Cupids, who stood in their fools' caps in obscure places
and, every time they heard that "Cold, quite cold," bowed their
disgraced little heads.
She was disappointed not to see Peter Pan, and I may as well tell you
now why he was so late that night. It was because his boat had got
wedged on the Serpentine between fields of floating ice, through which
he had to break a perilous passage with his trusty paddle.
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