A great army of gnomes hurried along the roads, following the way of the procession. They were not going to miss the crowning--no, not they! Policemen on duty were only half aware of the bustlement proceeding. The crowning was to be celebrated in St. James’s Park. A choir of birds were already singing the opening anthem as Oberon and Titania, still hand in hand with June, descended to thrones in the greenness. *CHAPTER XXII* *CROWNED* Fairyland! Fairyland! Again there was high revel in Fairyland--revel heartier, happier than ever before. No wilderness was now left unlighted by elf-kindness. Every brick and fragment of London town, as every grass-blade and flower in the green country, was under the acknowledged dominion of the fairy King. The elves had come to their own again. Oberon and Titania, with June seated between them, watched the procession of infinite fairies arriving; saw the glorious presences range themselves round the place of the coronation, while the preparation of the Park’s smooth sward for feasting and dancing went rapidly on. Gnomes bustled about pell-mell, as they had done that night of the year before, and soon made the wide, smooth lawn ready for melodies of motion and song. The heroes of old time came marching amid cheering to their places of honour near the throne. They were shining with the pride wrought by arduous duties done. The cousins of Rumpelstiltzkin, belonging to the brotherhood which in the far-away mountains of Knickerbocker had kidnapped happy-go-lucky Rip, came up from their deep-down workshops--hammers in their hands--to greet the fairy of the year. They stood or sat in groups, wagging their beards with crony’s talk, while gravely nodding in time with the music. The hoarded gossip of months was then in circulation. June was entranced by the wonders presented to her. It was all so happily old, and yet in every item and particle so freshly, entrancingly new. Nymphs came from the dim Down-There--an underground Kingdom with roads, rivers and mountains, nearly as vast and wonderful as this over-world, is hidden in Fairyland (its stories may be told some day)--to flit on gossamer wings and feet of light over the grass. Their motion touched the winds with rapture, and gave to the night radiance and fragrance. The daintiest and proudest of the immortals joined in the delight of the dancing. No happier evening in the long, long annals of Elfland has been or can be recorded. It was pre-eminently a brief series of hours of triumph, without a single regret or fear to spoil or mar the brightness and harmony. Stars sent down their dearest beams laden with blessings for elfkind and humanity. A great planet crossed the sky, a dazzling miniature of the moon at its full. June’s only wonder during that period was--Bim! He could not be far away. Where was he? It was strange he should not be there.