“In the glass palace you will see,” cried the children.
They joined hands round Kitty and danced more and more gayly, more and more quickly. The music grew merrier, and the sound seemed to get into Kitty’s head and into her feet. It set them dancing and made her feel giddy. Little joy bells seemed beating in her ears. They were not Christmas bells. “The prettiest little girl in all the world!” they seemed to ring again and again, backward and forward, so that she could not hear the guardian child’s sigh, “Silly, silly Kitty!”
The boy pulled her along, the dancers pressed around her and pushed her softly toward the glass palace.
There came a sound of singing.
“Listen,” said the boy; “everything is singing about you.”
Sure enough, the children, the birds, the breeze, the peacocks, the swans, the grasshoppers, sang, murmured, screamed, hummed:
“Do you know the violet’s hue?
Do you know the heart’s-ease dyes?
Brighter, deeper is the blue
Shining in sweet Kitty’s eyes.”