The table-cloth varies according to the seasons, and in May it is made of chestnut-blossom. The way 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 tablecloth, 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 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 or other delicacies with their tongues. When the Queen sees them doing this she signs to the servants to wash up and put away, and then everybody adjourns to the dance, the Queen walking in front while the Lord Chamberlain walks behind her, carrying two little pots, one of which contains the juice of wallflower and the other the juice of Solomon’s seals. Wallflower juice is good for reviving dancers who fall to the ground in a fit, and Solomon’s seals juice is for bruises. They bruise very easily, and when Peter plays faster and faster they foot it till they fall down in fits. For, as you know without my telling you, Peter Pan is the fairies’ orchestra. He sits in the middle of the ring, and they would never dream of having a smart dance nowadays without him. ‘P. P.’ is written on the corner of the invitationcards sent out by all really good families. They are grateful little people, too, and at the princess’s coming-of-age ball (they come of age on their second birthday and have a birthday every month) they gave him the wish of his heart.

The way it was done was this. The Queen ordered him to kneel, and then said that for playing so beautifully she would give him the wish of his heart. Then they all gathered round Peter to hear what was the wish of his heart, but for a long time he hesitated, not being certain what it was himself.

‘If I chose to go back to mother,’ he asked at last, ‘could you give me that wish?’

Now this question vexed them, for were he to return to his mother they should lose his music, so the Queen tilted her nose contemptuously and said, ‘Pooh! ask for a much bigger wish than that.’

‘Is that quite a little wish?’ he inquired.

‘As little as this,’ the Queen answered, putting her hands near each other.

‘What size is a big wish?’ he asked.

She measured it off on her skirt and it was a very handsome length.

Then Peter reflected and said, ‘Well, then, I think I shall have two little wishes instead of one big one.’

Of course, the fairies had to agree, though his cleverness rather shocked them, and he said that his first wish was to go to his mother, but with the right to return to the Gardens if he found her disappointing. His second wish he would hold in reserve.

They tried to dissuade him, and even put obstacles in the way.

‘I can give you the power to fly to her house,’ the Queen said, ‘but I can’t open the door for you.’

‘The window I flew out at will be open,’ Peter said confidently. ‘Mother always keeps it open in the hope that I may fly back.’

‘How do you know?’ they asked, quite surprised, and, really, Peter could not explain how he knew.

‘I just do know,’ he said.