“Yes, you simply must fetch him back somehow,” said the Duchess, clutching my arm nervously.  “You see my guests are beginning to get alarmed.  You must!—­you must!”

“B-but I can’t—­it’s impossible,” I endeavoured to explain.

The Duchess grew pale.  “Do you mean to say,” she gasped, “that the man has really disappeared—­and—­and taken the things with him?  It’s too terrible—­too dreadful!  What am I to do?  And all my guests!  What will they think of me?  Oh! Do—­do—­do something!  I don’t mind so much about my beautiful diamond pendant, but do somehow get back the things belonging to my guests.  You brought him here.  You must!”

The grown-up guests were whispering together in little anxious and indignant groups, and things were beginning to look very serious—­so serious that I sank into a chair and buried my head in my hands, trying to think of some possible way out of the difficulty.

The Duchess was almost in tears, and several ladies were trying to console her, when suddenly I thought of a means of escape.  Of course! the wish!  I had another wish left according to what the little book had told me.  I had wished for a collar-stud, and had found my own. Perhaps if I wished for the jewellery—­

The thought no sooner entered my head than I jumped up and began hopping on one leg repeating—­

     “Fairies, fairies! grant my wishes,
       You can do so if you will,
     Birds and beasts and—­”

“Oh, he’s mad, he’s gone mad.  Hold him, somebody!” cried the Duchess when she saw me hopping about in what must have appeared to her a most eccentric manner; but, though several gentlemen came up and caught hold of me, I managed to get round three times on one leg, and three times on the other, repeating the magic rhyme, and then I wished—­wished as hard as ever I could—­for the jewellery to be found, before I sank down exhausted with my struggle.

Then a most remarkable thing happened, for the gentleman who had been pointed out to me as the Lord Chief Justice, and who had apparently been more indignant than anyone else at the disappearance of the jewellery, suddenly began behaving in a very strange manner too, diving his hands first into one pocket and then into another and muttering—­“Strange! remarkable!  Most extraordinary!” and finally drawing out from every part of his clothing watches, chains, rings, bracelets and jewellery of all kinds, till every missing article, including the Duchess’s diamond pendant, was restored to its proper owner.

There was a pause at first, and then everybody began to talk at once—­laughing and protesting that “of course they all knew it was part of the trick, and they weren’t really anxious at all,” and so on, and I knew that the situation was saved.

Even the Duchess beamed and admitted that it was “really quite the most marvellous performance she had ever seen,” and thanked me over and over again for having introduced such a remarkable conjurer to her party.  The guests were all equally delighted, and amidst the laughter and chatter that followed, the Verrinder children and myself made good our escape, and I felt very thankful that the fairies’ “wish” had got me out of what at one time bid fair to have been a very awkward predicament.