Daphne, for some reason, did not fall asleep till later. She lay back in her luxuriously cushioned seat, watching the birds as they flew, spread out in a wide fan against the dusky blue evening sky. Gablehurst, with its scattered lights, artistic villa-residences, and prosaic railway station--its valley and common and wooded hills, were far below and soon left behind at an ever increasing distance. But she did not feel in the least afraid. It was odd, but, after the first surprise, she had lost all sense of strangeness in a situation so foreign to all her previous experience. "So we're being taken to Maerchenland," she was thinking. "That's the same as Fairyland, practically. At least it's where all the things they call Fairy stories really happened, and--_why_ I can't imagine--but Mr. and Mrs. Stimpson have been chosen King and Queen! And the poor dear things have no idea of it yet! Oh, I wonder" (and here, no doubt, the little creases came into her cheeks again, for she laughed softly to herself), "I _wonder_ what they'll say or do when they find out!" And while Daphne was still wondering, her eyelids closed gently, and she, too, was sleeping soundly. CHAPTER III FINE FEATHERS Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson was the first of her party to recover consciousness. When she did, she was greatly surprised to find that it was broad daylight, and that she was lying on a grassy slope, behind which was a forest of huge pines. Close beside her were the recumbent forms of her husband and family, which led her to the natural conclusion that the car must have met with an accident. "Sidney!" she cried, shaking him by the shoulder. "Speak to me! You're--you're not _seriously_ hurt, are you?" "Eh, what?" he replied sleepily, and evidently imagining that he was comfortably in bed at home; "all right, my dear, all right! I'll get up and bring in the tea-tray presently. Lots of time.... Why, hullo!" he exclaimed, after being shaken once more, as he sat up and rubbed his eyes. "How do we all come to be _here_?" The others were awake by this time. "And now we're here," put in Clarence, "where _are_ we, eh, Mater?" "It is no use asking _me_, Clarence. I know no more than you do. The last thing I remember was our all getting into the car to go and see the Pageant Committee. I've a vague recollection of ostriches--but no, I must have been dreaming _them_. However, the car seems to have upset somehow, only I don't see it about anywhere." "No," said Mr. Stimpson, "or old Thingumagig, or those fellows with the trumpets either." "Dumped us down here, and gone off with the car," said Clarence. "Looks as if we'd been the victims of a practical joke, what?"