“Look! the star is passing away,” urged the guardian child.
“I’ll think you’re an affected silly,” said the boy.
“I am not an affected silly,” cried Kitty, turning very red.
“Come along, then.”
Kitty felt her palm and fingers rolled up in a soft warm pudding of a hand, and she allowed herself to be dragged along.
What a run that was! The grapes touched her lips as she passed like silken fingers, the bananas gave delicious blows to her cheeks, the peaches caressed her with their velvet skins, the cherries pelted her.
She passed by a brown pool of chocolate-cream, in which ladies’ fingers stood up like reeds. She ran across a field where barley-sugar grew, and crystallized wild flowers. She came to a valley strewn with immense lumps like bowlders of almond-rock.
There the great table was set, under a pavilion made of gingerbread. The pie rose in the center. It was an immense pie, as big as a one-story house with its roof on, and it was all angles and bulges. It was white with sugar. All around it was clustered every dainty that could be imagined.
Children smacking their lips were assembled, and the moment the fat boy took his seat at the head of the table, with Kitty at his right hand, they all began to help themselves.
Kitty’s fingers itched to close over the delicious, crisp, sugary morsels spread near her.