Uncle John's little garden
Is full of bright flowers
And the fairies play tag
Through all the bright hours.
"Dear me," said the Yellow Dog Tramp, to himself, peeping out of the garage, where we left him in the last story, "they seem to be having a fine time!" And he sighed, for he was thinking of another garden up in Vermont and the old farm where he was a boy, long ago, before he had run away from home.
"Who's eye is watching us?" cried one of the fairies, all of a sudden, just like that. And then, of course, all these little people stopped playing but they couldn't see anything but the Yellow Dog Tramp's right eye, which, I forgot to tell you, was peeping through a tiny knothole.
"The Yellow Dog Tramp, who is old and lame
Is watching you play your tag-a-rag game,"
he answered, whereupon all the fairies said:
"Jump over the fence, and play awhile
Drop your scowl and put on a nice smile."
And when the Yellow Dog Tramp heard that, he couldn't help but laugh, and in less than five hundred short seconds he was over the wall. But, oh dear me. In a few minutes the big Ragged Rabbit Giant leaned over the tree top and said in a deep gruff voice:
"Fee, fum, fag, fog.
I smell the blood of a yellow dog."
"Quick, I must change you into a fairy puppy," said the queen fairy, and she waved her bright wand, and in less time than I can take to tell it he became small enough to creep into a tulip flower.
"Where has that dog gone?" asked the big Ragged Rabbit Giant, peeking under the bushes and behind the sunflowers, but he never thought to look in the tulip.