Presently there was trouble. Bim was a centre of petty uproar.
He was a gnome, very young as they go; and, from top to toe, red as a holly-berry.
While his work-brothers rushed and bustled, Bim was languid. Even Monsieur Chocolat himself could hardly have been less useful. He did his best--little better than nothing; but then he was very tired.
All that day and through the previous night he had been travelling. From the distant Land of Wild Roses he had toiled, following laboriously the course over which a company of fairies had easily flown or danced. They had been hastening to the valley of revels; and he must needs come too, because June was amongst them.
It had been--such a journey! The mere remembrance of the toil caused him to ache through every one of his six inches.
He had started on the previous evening, the instant the moon had peeped above the horizon. The fairy contingent had preceded him some hours earlier. He had only the vaguest notion of the way to take, never having been out of the Land of Wild Roses before.
Three things kept him, more or less, to the right track. He saw now and then solitary fairies on the wing wending their ways towards the place of assembly; more frequently, he passed flowers of sweetness so refreshed that evidently they had been touched by beneficent wands but recently. Thrice owls, hooting, had spared a word of advice and direction to the persevering wanderer.
The moon, which lighted his pathway, had followed her course till lost in the shine of morning. The stars had brightened and quivered and gone. The sun had lived his period of hours; the birds had worked and sung, the flowers and grasses had waved through a long bright April day, and still the determined gnome had laboriously journeyed on, following the flight of the fairy June.
Bim had been several times led astray through his ignorance, but all his wanderings, stumblings and weariness could not dim or lessen his determination. He rested but once, sleeping for a sunny hour in a welcome bedroom of nightshade and nettles in white blossom. At last he came to the turning of his long, long lane.
Now he was in the Violet Valley, and pressed with the others of his below-stairs brethren to the work of preparation: and he could not. He had the full weariness of a new arrival. Those of the gnomes, even those who had journeyed long distances, had been able to rest before labouring. There was no such fortune for Bim. Here he was, and at once he must do his share. A great many gnomes, noticing his languor, ceased work altogether to insist that he did not shirk.