Midnight! The magic hour of ghosts. Strange things happen around the big cello, standing idly and silently waiting in the corner.
Zoom! Boom! Bang! Thunder and Twang!
Snap goes the string on the cello, and the new peg is gone. It has disappeared completely. The fiddlers and Maestro cannot find it. The little Bride and Groom cannot find it. The thin aunts look into the acorn cups and the fat aunts into the saucers, and the grandmothers search through the flower beds for it. No one can find the nice new peg, flown from the Maestro’s fiddle.
The hours slip by. One by one the wedding guests go sadly away and the relatives madly home. The merry party has not been able to dance till dawn, and Maestro in vain tries to make peace with his indignant friends. They vow they’ll never have him lead the orchestra at carnival, wedding or christening, no, never! At least not until he finds that peg, so mysteriously snatched away from the neglected cello.
Up and down the pathways, among the banks of primrose and the stalks of thistle, poor Maestro, greedy Maestro, looks for a trace of the lost peg. He rubs his legs together, and his wings against each other. »Zoom! Squeak! Scrape! Squeal! Who has taken that peg?«
