There were about seven hundred. The great Throne Room was crammed with fairies, of all ages and of all degrees of beauty and ugliness—good fairies and bad fairies, flower fairies and moon fairies, fairies like spiders and fairies like butterflies—and as the Queen opened the door and began to say how sorry she was to have kept them waiting, they all cried, with one voice, “Why didn’t you ask me to your christening party?”
“I haven’t had a party,” said the Queen, and she turned to the King and whispered, “I told you so.” This was her only consolation.
“You’ve had a christening,” said the fairies, all together.
“I’m very sorry,” said the poor Queen, but Malevola pushed forward and said, “Hold your tongue,” most rudely.
Malevola is the oldest, as well as the most wicked, of the fairies. She is deservedly unpopular, and has been left out of more christening parties than all the rest of the fairies put together.
“Don’t begin to make excuses,” she said, shaking her finger at the Queen. “That only makes your conduct worse. You know well enough what happens if a fairy is left out of a christening party. We are all going to give our christening presents now. As the fairy of highest social position, I shall begin. The Princess shall be bald.”
The Queen nearly fainted as Malevola drew back, and another fairy, in a smart bonnet with snakes in it, stepped forward with a rustle of bats’ wings. But the King stepped forward too.
“No you don’t!” said he. “I wonder at you, ladies, I do indeed. How can you be so unfairylike? Have none of you been to school—have none of you studied the history of your own race? Surely you don’t need a poor, ignorant King like me to tell you that this is no go?”
“How dare you?” cried the fairy in the bonnet, and the snakes in it quivered as she tossed her head. “It is my turn, and I say the Princess shall be——”
The King actually put his hand over her mouth.