[Illustration:  THEIR PARENTS STARED IN GREAT DISTRESS]

“We want to swing on the blades of grass,” they kept saying, “and play hide-and-seek in the lily-cups, and take a nap between the leaves of the roses.”

The poor charwomen and coal-heavers, whose children the fairies were for the most part, stared at them in great distress.  They did not know what to do with these radiant, frisky little creatures into which their Johnnys and their Pollys and Betseys were so suddenly transformed.  But the fairies went to bed quietly enough when daylight came, and were soon fast asleep.

There was no further trouble till twelve o’clock, when all the children woke up.  Then a great wave of alarm spread over the city.  Not one of the costumes would come off then.  The buttons buttoned as fast as they were unbuttoned; the pins quilted themselves in as fast as they were pulled out; and the strings, flew round like lightning and twisted themselves into bow-knots as fast as they were untied.

And that was not the worst of it; every one of the children seemed to have become, in reality, the character which he or she had assumed.

The Mayor’s daughter declared she was going to tend her geese out in the pasture, and the shepherdesses sprang out of their little beds of down, throwing aside their silken quilts, and cried that they must go out and watch their sheep.  The princesses jumped up from their straw pallets, and wanted to go to court; and all the rest of them likewise.  Poor little Red Riding-hood sobbed and sobbed because she couldn’t go and carry her basket to her grandmother, and as she didn’t have any grandmother she couldn’t go, of course, and her parents were very much troubled.  It was all so mysterious and dreadful.  The news spread very rapidly over the city, and soon a great crowd gathered around the new Costumer’s shop, for every one thought he must be responsible for all this mischief.

The shop door was locked; but they soon battered it down with stones.  When they rushed in the Costumer was not there; he had disappeared with all his wares.  Then they did not know what to do.  But it was evident that they must do something before long, for the state of affairs was growing worse and worse.

The Mayor’s little daughter braced her back up against the tapestried wall and planted her two feet in their thick shoes firmly.  “I will go and tend my geese!” she kept crying.  “I won’t eat my breakfast!  I won’t go out in the park!  I won’t go to school.  I’m going to tend my geese—­I will, I will, I will!”

And the princesses trailed their rich trains over the rough, unpainted floors in their parents’ poor little huts, and held their crowned heads very high and demanded to be taken to court.  The princesses were, mostly, geese-girls when they were their proper selves, and their geese were suffering, and their poor parents did not know what they were going to do, and they wrung their hands and wept as they gazed on their gorgeously-appareled children.