Page:Across the Stream.djvu/52

42 infuriated fairy. "Why shouldn't I take you away in my basket and put you in the Tower of Toads?"

Archie gasped. He would have given much for a touch of yesterday's scepticism, but he couldn't find an atom of it. The thought of his mother being whisked off to the Tower of Toads was insupportable.

"Oh, please don't," he said.

"And who is that?" asked Abracadabra.

Archie almost wished he hadn't spoken, and took hold of Jeannie on one side and Harry on the other.

"It's me; it's Archie," he said.

"And you don't want me to take your ridiculous mother away?" she asked.

"No, please don't," said Archie.

"Very well, as it's your birthday, I won't. Instead I'll make her extra lady-in-waiting on my peacock-staircase, and mistress of my tortoise-shell robes."

"Oh, mummy, that will be lovely for you," said Archie, remembering that his mother was something of the kind to somebody already.

Then there came the giving of presents, with the surprises that occurred during such processes. Archie was told to advance and put his hand in the left far corner of the golden basket, and, as he prepared to do so, Abracadabra sneezed so loudly that he fled back to the bottom stair of the staircase where they had been all commanded to sit. There was a tennis racquet for Harry, but the lights all went out when he had just reached the clothes-basket, and Abracadabra blew her nose so preposterously that his ear sang with it afterwards. There was a great parcel for Lady Davidstow, as big as a football, which was found to contain, when all the paper was stripped off, nothing more than a single acid drop, in order to teach the mistress of the tortoise-shell robes better manners when her mistress came to pay a visit, and Blessington, summoned from the nursery, was presented with a new