lay great Colin’s face, just above the bedclothes, glowering at them like an ogre.
At last, after a few dances, he heard a clear sweet, ringing voice say,
“I’ve had enough of this. I’m tired of doing like the big people. Let’s have a game of Hey Cockolorum Jig!”
That instant every group sprang asunder, and every fairy began a frolic on his own account. They scattered all over the cottage, and Colin lost sight of most of them.
While he lay watching the antics of two of those near him, who behaved more like clowns at a fair than the gentlemen they had been a little while before, he heard a voice close to his ear; but though he looked everywhere about his pillow, he could see nothing. The voice stopped the moment he began to look, but began again as soon as he gave it up.
“You can’t see me. I’m talking to you through a hole in the head of your bed.”
“Don’t look,” said the voice. “If the queen sees me I shall be pinched. Oh, please don’t.”
The voice sounded as if its owner would cry presently. So Colin took good care not to look. It went on:
“Please, I am a little girl, not a fairy. The queen stole me the minute I was born, seven years ago, and I can’t get away. I don’t like the fairies. They are so silly. And they never grow any wiser. I grow wiser every year. I want to get back to my own people. They won’t let me. They make me play at being somebody else all night long, and sleep all day. That’s what they do themselves. And I should so like to be myself. The queen says that’s not the way to be happy at all; but I do want very much to be a little girl. Do take me.”