The leaves were content, and at once set to work. The fairies made tiny kitchens for them, and here they gathered the food for the family and prepared it for their use. The fairies carried it to roots and stems and flowers and seeds, so they all grew strong and well. At night the fairies swept the passages so clean that not a grain of dirt was left anywhere; the leaves threw out the rubbish from their kitchen doors.
Summer passed and autumn came. "You have worked well," said the fairies to the leaves. "Now you shall have your pleasure-trip."
They dressed the leaves in gay frocks, all gold and crimson and bright brown; they loosened them from the trees and set them floating on the wind. "Now follow us," they said; and the fluttering leaves followed them. First they whirled and danced on the ground beneath the trees, then they rose in the air and flew away, away—nobody knows where. You could not have seen the fairies leading if you had been there, for they are not visible to mortal eyes; but you would have seen the leaves following them. Where they went to I can't tell you. They never came back, though it is said that the fairies did.
BUNNY-BOY
"Now, Bunny-Boy," said his mother, "look after the house while I am away, and mind you do not go outside, for there are boys about to-day."
"What nonsense!" thought Bunny-Boy to himself. "As if I could not run faster than any boy. And I have been waiting for a chance to go and see the world, so I shall go to-day."
As soon as the Bunny-Mother was out of sight, he slipped out and ran away, this naughty Bunny-Boy, with his little white tail bobbing, and his eyes shining with delight. "Now, I shall see what the great world is like," he thought.
He came to a skylark sitting on her nest.
"Good-day, Lady Skylark!" he said. "I am going to see the world. Would you like to come with me?"