"Stay, all of you," loudly commanded the king. "June has gone wilfully, and must suffer. I would not use the smallest power in Fairyland to bring her back. She has gone disobediently. She can return when she will. I will not send for her. She has gone foolhardily, and must endure alone. We are all of us sorry. There will be no more elfin revels till June has come back again." "The crown! She has taken that!" said Titania. Oberon echoed the queen’s words. "She has taken that. It cannot perish. June cannot keep it beyond the year. She will have to bring it back then, or earlier. Now, fairies, May-day has come. To your homes and the daytime labours. Away, away! The revels have ended indeed!" Then there was hurry on the part of the gnomes. Oberon and Titania and their sparkling company flew in a long procession on a winding aerial course, to the palace of the king, which is hidden from eyes of men on an Irish mountain. They were there in a twinkling. Wink thrice and a fairy’s journey is ended, though it be over deserts and beyond seas. It is not so with the gnomes. They must labour and struggle along, like mice and men. But the winged lords and ladies of Elfdom are the happy fortunate. They can put Time in a thimble when they please, and play leap-frog with continents. In less than three and a half minutes, as measured by a well-behaved clock, the Violet Valley was deserted by all but the birds and Bim. Even the nymph of the lake was invisible. She had sunk to the depths of her pellucid palace the moment June made her bold decision. Bim waddled to the place where the throne had been. It was rank wild-growth again. No one not a fairy could have dreamed that such a sight had been there but a fragment of time before. He threw himself at full length--such a little full length--on the grass where June had been standing, and thought for a long while with his very best wits. He made a soliloquy. "King Oberon said we were not to go. He said that June was to come back alone. He said no one was to follow her. I shall be punished if I go. Pricks and pains and aches and beatings! Ugh! But would that be worse than Fairyland without June? No, it would not. Fairyland will not be Fairyland to me without June. I am going after her; Oberon can beat me till I’m blue." So declaring, he sprang to his feet. "Brave gnome!" said a voice behind him. Bim turned about in fright. The courage which had risen during his soliloquy went--pluff!--like an unset jelly. The nymph of the lake had spoken. She had returned, and stood again on her leaf in the middle of the pool. He was pleased to see she looked at him in the friendliest manner.