Pop! Kenneth was half blinded by a stream of water that spurted into his eye. It was no fountain pen, but a fountain pop-gun that had gone off when he touched it.
“Ha, ha!” shrieked the flowers, in a perfect madness of delight. Kenneth sat down on the grass to wipe his eyes and dry the little river that was running most uncomfortably up his coat sleeve. But my! How quickly he sprang up again! The grass that looked so tempting and soft was a cruel snare. For some one had wickedly planted it with pins or needles. Poor Kenneth! This was too much.
It is no fun to find one’s self a human pincushion. He began to cry, and even then he heard the voices of the flowers sounding faintly, and they were laughing still. He glanced toward them angrily, then tucked his hands into his pockets and resolved not to let them see him cry. He marched away up the avenue without a glance into the Christmas trees, although they dangled the most interesting bundles before his face and seemed trying to tempt him to pluck their magic fruit. He also kept off the grass more carefully than if there had been a staring signboard to warn him.
Now just outside the palace grew a thicket of magic nut bushes. Here Kenneth always stopped on his way to the greater wonders inside, to crack a nut and to have a pleasant surprise. Yes, there at the foot of the marble steps was the thicket, green as usual, and full of brown nuts, mysteriously knobby and promising. Kenneth picked one and knelt down on the gravel to crack it with a stone. But instead of the beautiful velvet cloak, magically folded into a tiny parcel, or a dwarf pony which would quickly grow full-sized, or a picture-book with moving figures on its pages, such as he had found at other times, the nut was stuffed with dusty cobwebs, which were of no use to any one, least of all to Kenneth.
“Oh!” said Kenneth, in disappointment, and then he distinctly heard a queer voice cry, “April Fool!” He looked up and around, but there was no one to be seen.
“April Fool!” cried the voice again. “Ha, ha! Kenneth has such a sense of fun! He is a great joker himself; ha, ha!” Kenneth thought it must be one of the flowers, though the voice sounded different. He wished the good Fairy would come to him. His chin began to quiver, when he heard the same queer voice tittering behind the thicket of nut bushes. There was a little summer-house close by, and into this Kenneth ran to hide the tears which would come into his eyes. What a disagreeable country it was, this Fairyland which he had loved so well! He came here to be happy; but all these ugly tricks fairly spoiled the pretty place. He said to himself that he would never come again. Just then he spied a large, square envelope fastened to the side of the summer-house by a thorn. It was addressed, “For Kenneth.”
“Why, that means me,” he cried, very much surprised. “Perhaps it is a letter from my good Fairy to explain why she has not come to meet me.” And he tore it open eagerly.
It was a fat, bulky letter of several sheets. This was very exciting, for Kenneth had not received many letters in his short life. He unfolded the first sheet. From the middle of the page stared at him these words printed in huge red letters:—
APRIL FOOL!