Houses and streets were decorated as they should be. There were archways of flags; but paper flowers were properly tabooed. No fairy could tolerate that kind of drivel. Lamp-posts were wreathed with holly; bunches of mistletoe hung at street-corners. Kissing became popular again. Old maids, whose hearts had been starved for years and years, grew gracious and watched for bearded policemen. Every window and window-sill was decked with laurel and moss. Chinese lanterns were hung over gates and under porches. Lighted lamps with coloured shades shone through uncurtained windows, so that when night fell every street and roadway became an illuminated avenue. Next-door neighbours, who for years had taken obvious pains to be mutually indifferent, exchanged greetings of good cheer, and admired each other’s decorations. June, who had felt some awe for the high-collar pride of little Londoners, seeing this triumph of geniality, this evidence of the lessening of two-penny vanity, sang joy-songs, and encouraged her comrades. They followed her lead with whoo-whooping! What a time! Then the newspapers and the pulpits began to speak. A great project was evolved and set in being. There must be in every district--the press panjandrums declared with elf-induced unanimity a Christmas supper, after the good old jolly style. Funds were started to save any call upon the rates. Gifts of edibles, drinkables, and current coin rolled in. Mayors and councillors, workers in churches, chapels, conventicles of all sorts, and of no sort; political women and plodding housewives; dukes’ sons, cooks’ sons, sons of belted earls with their sisters and their cousins and their aunts; my Lady Bountiful and my lady who scrubs--these with all and sundry came together in a spirit of splendid camaraderie to consider ways and means of establishing the Christmas joy-feasts. Town-halls, village rooms, and other suitable places in all parts of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were made ready for the great celebration. Mountains of food and rivers of delectable liquid were prepared. Chefs, professional, amateur and very amateur, went to work with a will. Localities bragged of their poultry and puddings. Small boys walked about with glistening eyes; small girls, telling their evening toll of fairy stories, got into the habit of ending their "happy ever afterwards" with the assurance that not a year passed without the wedded prince and princess having a Christmas supper with their people. ’Twas bliss to be alive. Scrooges a thousand-fold were converted wholesale. The fairies, all were working during the entire twenty-four hours of the day; and somehow--somehow they actually managed to squeeze into that ordered period of time an additional twenty minutes. How it was done they only know. Really, they are wonderful--those fairies!