The Little House
often did with splendid firmness, that one day he meant to remain behind in the Gardens after the gates were closed.
‘O Tony,’ she would say with awful respect, ‘but the fairies will be so angry!’
‘I dare say,’ replied Tony carelessly.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, thrilling, ‘Peter Pan will give you a sail in his boat!’
‘I shall make him,’ replied Tony; no wonder she was proud of him.
But they should not have talked so loudly, for one day they were overheard by a fairy who had been gathering skeleton leaves, from which the little people weave their summer curtains, and after that Tony was a marked boy. They loosened the rails before he sat on them, so that down he came on the back of his head; they tripped him up by catching his bootlace, and bribed the ducks to sink his boat. Nearly all the nasty accidents you meet with in the Gardens occur because the fairies have taken an ill-will to you, and so it behoves you to be careful what you say about them.
Maimie was one of the kind who like to fix a day for doing things, but Tony was not that kind,
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