They made their wee round flower-buds and set them on the trees, and blew into them and puffed them out till they looked like tiny snowballs. Harder and harder they blew, until at last the flowers flew open. Then the trees looked as if showers of white stars had fallen on them from the sky in snow-time. How lovely they were! The little flies came from far and near to feast, buzzing out their thankfulness to the fairies for the sweet honey. The Summer Fairies came with roses and forget-me-nots. "Come out and dance," they called. "We have no time," called back the May Fairies. "We have to make our berries." They gently loosened the white petals of the flowers and set them floating on the wind. Then they made the little green seed-balls into berries, blowing them big and round so that the seeds should have room to grow, and polishing the outsides till they turned red and glowed like garnets in the sunshine. What a feast the birds had! When the fairies had finished it was autumn. "Come and dance," called the Leaf Fairies as they fluttered past in their brown and crimson robes. "We are coming," called back the May Fairies, "for now our work is done." They flew down from their tree-homes, free at last to dance through all the golden autumn days. THE DRAGON He was not a pretty fellow by any means when he lived in the water. Indeed, the mosquito babies thought him the ugliest and fiercest-looking creature in the world; but as he ate them up whenever he could catch them their bad opinion of him was hardly to be wondered at. They all lived in the pool. The mosquito babies felt that it would have been a happy life if it had not been for the Dragon. He would lie so still and grey in the water that they would think he was only a stick, but as they came near his horrid mask would open, and out would shoot his cruel jaws; they would be swallowed before they had time to think any more. What an appetite he had! It seemed as if all the mosquito babies in the pool would never satisfy him. But one day his appetite failed. "I feel very queer," he said. "I will go up into the air." He crawled slowly up a reed and hung on to it above the water, and there he seemed to sleep for days and weeks, neither moving nor eating. The mosquito babies could have a good time now--if there were any left. As he hung there his skin grew strangely hard and dry and shrunken, as if it were becoming a lifeless case. And that is just what was happening. Inside it the Dragon was growing into something quite different from what he had been. One morning he stirred. "How close and dark it is in here!" he said. "I must go out." He put his head against the end of the case and pushed hard. Crack! went the dry skin, and out popped his head. "This is tiring work," he said; he stopped to rest and to grow used to the strong light.