“We consent!” cried all the people; but the Mayor, though he was so generous, was a proud man.  “I will not consent to the second condition,” he cried angrily.

“Very well,” replied the Costumer, picking some more cherries, “then your youngest daughter tends geese the rest of her life, that’s all!”

The Mayor was in great distress; but the thought of his youngest daughter being a goose-girl all her life was too much for him.  He gave in at last.

“Now go home, and take the costumes off your children,” said the Costumer, “and leave me in peace to eat cherries!”

Then the people hastened back to the city and found, to their great delight, that the costumes would come off.  The pins staid out, the buttons staid unbuttoned, and the strings staid untied.  The children were dressed in their own proper clothes and were their own proper selves once more.  The shepherdesses and the chimney-sweeps came home, and were washed and dressed in silks and velvets, and went to embroidering and playing lawn-tennis.  And the princesses and the fairies put on their own suitable dresses, and went about their useful employments.  There was great rejoicing in every home.  Violetta thought she had never been so happy, now that her dear little sister was no longer a goose-girl, but her own dainty little lady-self.

The resolution to provide every poor child in the city with a stocking full of gifts on Christmas was solemnly filed, and deposited in the city archives, and was never broken.

Violetta was married to the Cherry-man, and all the children came to the wedding, and strewed flowers in her path till her feet were quite hidden in them.  The Costumer had mysteriously disappeared from the cherry-tree the night before, but he left, at the foot, some beautiful wedding presents for the bride—­a silver service with a pattern of cherries engraved on it, and a set of china with cherries on it, in hand-painting, and a white satin robe, embroidered with cherries down the front.

DILL.

Dame Clementina was in her dairy, churning, and her little daughter Nan was out in the flower-garden.  The flower-garden was a little plot back of the cottage, full of all the sweet, old-fashioned herbs.  There were sweet marjoram, sage, summersavory, lavender, and ever so many others.  Up in one corner, there was a little green bed of dill.

Nan was a dainty, slim little maiden, with yellow, flossy hair in short curls all over her head.  Her eyes were very sweet and round and blue, and she wore a quaint little snuff-colored gown.  It had a short full waist, with low neck and puffed sleeves, and the skirt was straight and narrow and down to her little heels.

She danced around the garden, picking a flower here and there.  She was making a nosegay for her mother.  She picked lavender and sweet-william and pinks, and bunched them up together.  Finally she pulled a little sprig of dill, and ran, with that and the nosegay, to her mother in the dairy.