Bab danced with her old friend the Sand Man, Meg with Mudge,—dear little scaly Mudge!—and Dick with Cross Patch. Humpty Dumpty danced with Princess Star, of course, and Mother Goose with the Sea Kobold. Bizzybuzz had the Old Woman who Sweeps the Cobwebs from the Sky for a partner, Puss in Boots had the Sleeping Beauty, and the other Beauty danced with Hop O’ My Thumb. The Three Little Bears paired off respectively with Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Lady Gray-Wing. Moon-Eyes and the Owl Innkeeper were allotted to Snow White and Rose Red. One of the three Jacks—the one who was accustomed to giant-killing—danced with the Wooden Cow, and the other two were very well content with Rapunzel and the Fair One with Golden Locks. The so-called “Beast” flirted gaily with the fairy with whom he danced, and the Dragon-Fly hummed cheerfully as he followed the measures of the dance with another merry elf. The Red Squirrel also danced with a fairy. At last, as the sunset radiance faded, and the stars peered out far above, the music waned and died, and the guests, one by one and two by two, began to slip away, with a word of thanks to Mother Goose, and a kindly farewell to the three mortal children. Those who were their own particular friends expressed a hope that they would all meet again some day; the others merely said that they were glad that they had met. Off among the dim woodland spaces drifted the Make Believe folk, and Mother Goose and the children returned to the little cottage, lighted warmly yet softly by the flickering blaze from the fireplace. [Illustration] XVIII _At Last_ [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XVIII _At Last_ And then Mother Goose called them to the table, where supper was already waiting, and they began to eat. The children were very hungry, and it seemed to them that they had never had such good things to eat in all their lives. But afterward when they tried to remember what they had had, they found that was a misty blank. Then after supper they sat around the fire, and Mother Goose got out her spinning-wheel and sang to them all the dear, wonderful, foolish songs that every child knows—or ought to know. And she made a song about the rescue of Humpty Dumpty. You have all heard it, but don’t you wish you could have heard it when it was first made up, as Bab and Meg and Dick did, by the cheerful little fire in Mother Goose’s cottage? This is the way it went, and she spun as she sang: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall! Not all the King’s horses, nor all the King’s men Could ever put Humpty Dumpty together again! —I’m glad to say,” she added, smiling. “Mother Goose,” said Dick, rather shyly, “do—do you think that we could be pardoned now for—for not believing in—in—Make Believe things?”