"At some distance behind them, scurrying helter skelter and pell mell, were a group of acrobatic brownies, turning somersaults and handsprings, flip flaps and cart wheels. Some were sliding down the steep on one ear, while others paused for a moment to stand straight up in the air on the tips of their noses. Some were walking along on their hands; but all moved with merry, joyous shout onward toward the village, juggling their dishes in the air as they came. "The voices of the singers were in perfect unison, from the little pot-bellied brownie in the rear, who sang bass, to the flat-faced pygmy in the centre, whose high tenor notes echoed and re-echoed among the surrounding mountains. Thus gaily they came onward, while 'Aunt Twaddles' and the children stood watching them from the throne. "Down in the Village of Hide and Seek all now was silent. The Doll-General had scattered his forces and marched them away in a quiet, orderly manner to long tables methodically grouped on the lawn. All the dolls seemed to be listening to the sweet music. "Louder and louder came the song from the band of musical midgets. As they drew nearer, Arthur and Maud noticed that each dwarf carried a large tray before him and that the trays were loaded with good things to eat, piled so high that a strong wide strap encircled the neck of each dwarf and helped support the tray at its sides. "Down the line the army of tumbling pygmies came whirling along, each bearing a tower of snow-white china dishes; and, strange as it may seem, not a dish was broken in the rocky journey. "The dwarfs were not long in spreading their fine feast before the dolls. They had scarcely begun to pass around the cake when two sturdy-looking dwarfs staggered up the onyx steps of the throne, bearing two heavily laden trays. "They were followed by four funny-faced little brownies who spread a table before the children, and, winking and blinking and smiling, went merrily about their work. "When the table was all prepared, the dwarfs placed before each of the children a big turkey-dish piled two feet high with vanilla, strawberry and chocolate ice cream. The four brownies then stepped between them and sat down a wash tub filled with rich chocolate layer cake. Then, with a wild shout of hilarious joy, they slid head first down the golden balustrade and landed upon the grass, turning somersault after somersault as they rolled along on the velvety lawn. "And such ice cream it was! You could fairly see the rich, yellow cream oozing out of it. Little Maud declared, as she looked at her brother with a delighted smile, that it surely must have been sweetened with honey. "'My!' she exclaimed, as she tasted it again and again, 'What glorious cream! I could die eating it, but we must save some to take home.' And she tasted it again, with a loud smack of her pretty lips.