"Gnome," said the nymph, "you must be young as spring-time, or you would not have come so far and arrived so late. You are, I see, from the Land of the Wild Rose. So was I. So is June--our June. You shall be favoured. Lie under that dock-leaf; keep still and take rest. You shall see the best of the wonders. Lucky gnome!" Bim obeyed, creeping to the hiding-place and lying there, resting, his eyes alight, as quietly as a mouse with suspicions. The gnomes, their business well ended, ran to points of vantage. They clambered along boughs, clung to tree-creepers and shrubbery, like blobs of living fruit. Cross-legged they perched on mounds, whistling, singing, playing impish pranks, chaffing and chiding one another, in all the happiness of easy idleness. They were the jolliest mob in Fairyland that night. There was not a grumble in the whole assembly. Then the fairies began to arrive. From here and there, like musical snowflakes, they fell, flying down from the skies. They sparkled like gems, their wands were pointed with brilliance, their wings shone with iridescence, their garments were spangled gossamer. As each elf-knight alighted, he folded his wings and marched, with lance or slender sword upraised, to an appointed place, and stood there attentive, waiting, while in myriad gnome-voices the heroes were acclaimed. As every gentle fairy came to earth, she tripped or lightly flew over the dancing-ground and sat or reclined among the flowers. The Violet Valley was thronged with a thousand pictures of loveliness and enchantment. All the while the gathering proceeded they and the fairies were singing a world-old fairy-song. The bells of Elfland musically jangled. Bim and the stars were delighted. So was the moon. Fairy horns and trumpets pealed: a fanfare of welcome rang with echoes over the higher-land grasses. For here are the royalties! A procession worth seeing slowly approached and passed. The pride and panoply of mortal pageantry is tinsel and crudeness in comparison with what the fairies can do. Leading came a bodyguard of gnomes, looking quaint and important in their warlike furniture. Their round faces, wearing expressions of tremendous seriousness, their goggle-eyes, and legs, some spindle, others bandy as half-way hoops, gave a sort of pantomime poetry to the proceedings. "Shiar-shiar-shiar!" shouted their commander in his best militarese. They halted, turned inwards in two long lines, stepped backwards, leaving a generous space between, and shuffled into comparative exactness of places. They were ranged in companies, according to colour, the pride of position belonging to the sky-blue and grass-green companies.