Besides the honeysuckle you might see the hawkweed and the white convolvulus, varying the soft verdure of the thicket; and mushrooms in abundance had sprung up in the circle, glittering in the silver moonlight, and acceptable beyond measure to the dancers: every one knows how agreeable a thing tents are in a _fete champetre_! I was mistaken in saying that the brake closed the circle entirely round; for there was one gap, scarcely apparent to mortals, through which a fairy at least might catch a view of a brook that was close at hand, rippling in the stars, and checkered at intervals by the rich weeds floating on the surface, interspersed with the delicate arrowhead and the silver water-lily.

Then the trees themselves, in their prodigal variety of hues,--the blue, the purple, the yellowing tint, the tender and silvery verdure, and the deep mass of shade frowning into black; the willow, the elm, the ash, the fir, and the lime, "and, best of all, Old England's haunted oak;" these hues were broken again into a thousand minor and subtler shades as the twinkling stars pierced the foliage, or the moon slept with a richer light upon some favoured glade.
It was a gala night; the elderly fairies, as I said before, were chatting among the honeysuckles; the young were flirting, and dancing, and making love; the middle-aged talked politics under the mushrooms; and the queen herself and half-a-dozen of her favourites were yawning their pleasure from a little mound covered with the thickest moss.
"It has been very dull, madam, ever since Prince Fayzenheim left us," said the fairy Nip.
The queen sighed.
"How handsome the prince is!" said Pipalee.
The queen blushed.
"He wore the prettiest dress in the world; and what a mustache!" cried Pipalee, fanning herself with her left wing.
"He was a coxcomb," said the lord treasurer, sourly.

The lord treasurer was the honestest and most disagreeable fairy at court; he was an admirable husband, brother, son, cousin, uncle, and godfather,--it was these virtues that had made him a lord treasurer.

Unfortunately they had not made him a sensible fairy.

He was like Charles the Second in one respect, for he never did a wise thing; but he was not like him in another, for he very often said a foolish one.
The queen frowned.
"A young prince is not the worse for that," retorted Pipalee.