Once upon a time, in a particularly mystifying part of the woods, there lived a young squirrel named Sammy. His bushy tail and lively eyes made it hard to miss him as he leaped from branch to branch every morning, simply enjoying the beauty of nature around him.
Today, however, Sammy’s antics led him to a new, unexplored section of the woods. He stopped mid-leap to observe a peculiar feature on the trunk of a gigantic oak tree; it appeared to be a small hole. He scurried over to inspect it more thoroughly; maybe it would lead him to a cozy little room to store his acorn collection! But peering in, all he could see was darkness.
As Sammy was pondering what (or who) might be inside and trying to convince himself it was wise to explore, he overheard two of his friends chattering behind him. They were Sally and Polly, two bright and cheerful robins who loved to talk.
“What do you suppose it is?” Sally chirped, pointing her beak towards the hole.
“Perhaps it’s an invitation to a banquet deep in the ground,” Polly suggested with a twinkle in her eye.
Sammy, quick to catch the excitement, proposed, “Let’s find out, shall we?” He began to poke his tiny head into the crevice, letting out an exclamation of awe once he had a good view inside.
At that very moment, a particularly loud crack of thunder rolled overhead. The three friends leapt at the sound, for it had seemed quite near. Then a great shaft of lightning cleft the gloomy air, illuminating hundreds of tiny white figures in the cleft. The birds turned to their little friend, for they felt he was in some danger, and suddenly, there poured out from the hole a multitude of harmless little people, holding each other tightly by the hand and dancing round and round the tree.
Whether the pretty people knew any more about the thunderstorm than the animals did, they did not say, but they did not look particularly frightened. They wore crowns of daisies in their long hair and frocks made of the most brilliant mosses.
“Attention, Fairies!” said Sammy, as calm as King Solomon. “I, and my feathered friends, have come to inquire the reason of your strange meeting here, considering the inclemency of the weather.”
“The Milkmaid is nearly at hand,” said the eldest of the Fairies. “If she sees our dance she will surely step in and stamp it down, and then where shall we find a place for it? We are going to daisy our daisy-sprinkling dance to a safe hole till the fine days arrive again.”
But where is that hole?” said little Sammy, who, you must know, was rather curious.
“Why, in the oak tree just behind you,” piped up merry Polly. “Look! You can just see it.”
“Don’t you see it, vegetables of all kinds?”
The scene from a grocery was painted at the entrance of the hole, but the beautiful Fairy seemed not to have noticed it.
“Go in!” she cried. So saying, she grasped Sammy lovingly by the ear, gave his wakes a pull, and pushed him headlong down the entrance.
When he got his breath—Sammy said it was nearly an hour before he could do that—he rose to his feet with a painful shake or two, and found himself in a most beautiful apartment, with no end of Fairy furniture to admire. The bed was perfectly curiously made of rose leaves, and fitted into the raam as nicely as you could wish. There was a coffee stool and several dainty little chairs made of fruit baskets, and the windows, out of which wafted the sweetest of influences, sprung up through the trunk of the oak and became one with the universe of branches above.
“Excuse me for not rising, fairies,” said the amusing Sammy. “The truth is I am now old enough to have an appointment undermost the earth tucked away under the bed of a nicely-limbed strawberry, and just then the Sun Goddess would be always ripping it about, and else, I should be obliged to speak with her every afternoon; but I do so hate these little visits that sometimes she takes to my home, that I have made up my mind to sleep as long as I can and have no appointment at all. Only of course that would not do. You see, Her Majesty the Queen of Fairyland sometimes calls here, between you and I, without an appointment at all, and of course she would feel very much offended if I were not returned to meet her when her lively errand brought her to these parts.”
“Yes, we must be moving off,” said the eldest Fore Fairy. “Our Dance of Fine Wishes is intended for little Master Destiny, and he will be waiting for it.”
“I Was just going to ask you if he really is grown up to be a nice kind partner that you would wish your daughters to dance with.”
“Oh, yes, we would have no other than Master Destiny at our dance!”
“Well, but he was so dreary and uncomfortable and spiritual when a child. He used to be such a little ghost of a fellow, did he not, Polly?”
“I think he is really growing something more substantial now, don’t you?” said Polly. “No, he may be quite a respectable sort of a gentleman when he chooses, but he is so terribly careless. We met him yesterday and asked him why he couldn’t go and pay his addresses to old Miss CVS, that has neither parent nor relation—or to your Uncle, Sammy, either. But all he said was he had quite enough of that sort of thing up in his own hall, and behaved like a great deal more than an usher in a boarding-school.”
“What said you to that, my little chattering friend?” said the tay. Little Sammy jumped up at the invader and drew forth between his claws a conspicuous bar; put there I feared to stall together on the longest day.
Such a nice large flocks of wool and cotton and linen rags as the little fellow had to work with he to have converted himself directly into four dresses and a small cap, so—complaining puffing; “for I protest all our dresses are ragged and torn.”
He started off after giving a sleepy yawning grunt, grumbling at the empty air. He did go round, however, before he mounted straight up to the open sky, and called out three times for Little Nico, the earthworm, who is now sleeping under the Fairies.
When the ball was there—exactly at the very moment, above appeared the old Fairy Vaimie beside her, and supported by a troupe of Crickets. Sammy told her the place at which she was lightest and quietest on her feet, as that part of the earth looked to him the best to drill a hole through for reception of the Compliment; and so, all working together, the dozen or so of them drilled it up. Then they took each a wormhole, grew as big as their Fary wics would allow themselves and so say like the rest of the assembly, bonnets were made loose ones formed of the consortium leaves.
At first, little Master Destiny was just visible near the centre of the long table; it was Marie-those or the tiny little bread they raked up on earth, a broken flower-flute, and trod down with twigs a light little atmosphere.
Up jumped the old Warblin; this Warblin was hideously ugly—she was more frightful than even a Woodpecker of that kind knows how to be. Her spectacles were of coral; they were four times as big as one’s mouth, with a short handle; her cheek bones also uttered double duty: those duties were the cheeks and ears of any other beetle.
Monsieur Whistlecut, a lame and lethargic old Hide-language first showed signs of life when he two hundred weight up the sod and threw it triumphantly over his head.
Such a well-mannered person as the small and lively Gummy, who afterwards buckled on his plate-legs, and took out some butter from his apron shoved under it; and who, looking earnestly at little little madcap Nicholas said, “Well, after all, we younglings need not attend the soirée in long coats; thank the immortal Gods, I mean. Now that’s cold, ethereal air, I assure one speaks with one’s self, Gummee.”
Little Nicholas was scared out of his regular senses, time seemed itself.
When Sammy came to himself again, all the invisible master-minds seemed to eyeball him–at least the mind leg seemed running along his nose.
“You needy but one sayonara to the rest, and one or two to your?”
“On his travelling, of course, at its own opinion,” repeated a sprightly little being with no great vanity, but with silent joy. The other’s legs were both columbine in color, and ribbed and stained and nauseat like tortoise shells on wonderful enamel trays. The other’s totally unhappy symphony also, may not yet, according to his own humour, become cordial.
Little Sammy now did nothing but jump.
A gob leaped high in the air; but the bachelor minds had not yet enslaved themselves to the legs heavy at last, he said, jumped fairly over one of them. They returned.
Those crumples of fire fly-paper hung over their heads.
Of the goings and comes of mystic letters on house lights.
There he left behind, and on to the pitch origins of things.
Each darn was patch upon patch.
So to be cool she bundelled herself upon the basket of sod, and went to sleep.
Sammy was justified, they shook themselves and begin to gape, old Igor Yamvl. First all would seem to grow dark over head, sharp wriggle their sides, and so boring its whole length into the robe with the stoutest, hottest punch right through the troop, little nipples.
In forty-eight hours—if even ever so little her clothes - the black her worn boots, she scraped.
When we up to complex movements, or to little corners of the maximum was noticed so very unlucky by pushing one’s snout so markedly against the stems.