The Elves went on with their play till midnight, and exactly at midnight the Elves stopped their play, and undressed, and got up into the boughs of a big tree and went to sleep. You may wonder how the Elves know when it is midnight, as there are no clocks in Mushroom Land, of course. But they cannot really help knowing, as it is exactly at twelve that the Mushrooms begin to grow, and the little Mushrooms come up.
Now the Elves covered every branch of the tree, as you see in the picture, and the Fairies did not know where to lie down. At last they decided to lie down under a very big Mushroom.
“Nonsense,” they said. “You may sleep out in the open air, if you like; we mean to make ourselves comfortable here.”
So they all lay down under the shelter of the Mushroom, and Prince Comical slept in the open air. In the morning he wakened, feeling very well and hungry, and off he set to call his friends. But he might as well have called the Mushroom itself. There they all lay under its shade; and though some of them had their eyes open, not one of them could move. The Prince shook them, dragged them, shouted at them, and pulled their hair. But the more he shouted and dragged, the louder they snored; and the worst of it was, that he could not pull them out of the shadow of the Magic Mushroom. So there he had to leave them, sound asleep.
The Prince thought the Elves could help him perhaps, so he went and asked them how to waken his friends. They were all awake, and the Fairies were dressing the baby-Elves. But they only said, “Oh! its their fault for sleeping under a Mushroom. Anybody would know that is a stupid thing to do. Besides, we have no time to attend to them, as the sun will be up soon, and we must get these Babies dressed and be off before then.”
“Why, where are you going to?” said the Prince.
“Ah! nobody knows where we go to in the day time,” said the Elves.
And nobody does.
“Well, what am I to do now?” said the Prince to the Black Beetle.