Page:Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1912, Hodder & Stoughton).djvu/247

 ‘Oh, la!’ replied the oak bitingly, ‘how deliciously cosy it is to stand here buttoned to the neck and watch you poor naked creatures shivering.’

This made them sulky, though they had really brought it on themselves, and they drew for Maimie a very gloomy picture of the perils that would face her if she insisted on going to the ball.

She learned from a purple filbert that the court was not in its usual good temper at present, the cause being the tantalising heart of the Duke of Christmas Daisies. He was an Oriental fairy, very poorly of a dreadful complaint, namely, inability to love, and though he had tried many ladies in many lands he could not fall in love with one of them. Queen Mab, who rules in the Gardens, had been confident that her girls would bewitch him, but alas! his heart, the doctor said, remained cold. This rather irritating doctor, who was his private physician, felt the Duke’s heart immediately after any lady was presented, and then always shook his bald head and murmured, ‘Cold, quite cold.’ Naturally Queen Mab felt disgraced, and first she tried the effect of ordering the court into tears for nine minutes, and then she blamed the Cupids and decreed that they