Page:Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Walker).djvu/16

 becomes leader, then the third, then the fourth, and so on until each fairy has been the leader once. It sounds very stupid, but if you are a fairy, it is the most delightful play in the whole world. If only human beings weren't so dignified, there are many delightful things they could learn from the fairies. L'Envoi. L'Envoi!

FACING PAGE 201

This is a picture of father stork hastening to tell Mrs. Stork the upsetting scandal. Look closely and you will see fairies sleeping on the waterlily-pads. They never sleep except when they have danced their hands hot—which is very seldom. Then, with a little wince, they stick their hands under a frog's stomach to keep them cool, just as on cold winter nights we stick our hands under the pillows to keep them warm.

FACING PAGE 222

The dragon who posed for this picture had no name; the wiggly thing that grows on his back from his head to his tail is his comb. It wiggled so while he was posing that the fairies discovered that it would make a delightful door-mat. If one stood on it only for a second it wiggled all the mud off his feet and so they gave him a name. It was Diplo-door-mat. He rather liked this name, for all his life he had been called just Dragon, which made him feel as though he were in the insurance business and sat on a high stool and wrote in a big book all day.

TAILPIECE, THE END

Instead of second teeth the birds get second feathers, and because they are friends with the fairies they can feather oftener than we can get new teeth. When the feathering time comes the birds have no grown-ups to tie strings to their feathers and pull them out, as they do our teeth, so the fairies pull those that are stubborn and will not fall out. Here stands a gay and debonair creature who pulled the stubborn feathers from the peacock's tail. He left one feather which forms a magic circle. This is a wish of good fortune from the fairies to you. This creature is not conceited, though he looks so. He belongs to the tribe of fairies who eat worms and has just eaten two. That is what gives his stomach its arrogant tilt, and it is in utter defiance of no one at all that he says airily: "The book is finished. I don't care; I'll do another!"