‘I felt certain you would,’ said the Wise Woman, making a curtsey, ‘and a thousand welcomes. If the child has brought the thrushes’ notes everything is ready.’
‘She has brought them,’ put in another tiny voice, ‘and they are impatient to sing.’
‘Then please follow me,’ said the Wise Woman, going into the hut; and in flew all the lovely little creatures, with gentle fanning of wings, which made a soft breeze as they came.
‘Prince Fire is already at work,’ said the Wise Woman, pointing to the box, and Betty, who had followed the Little Lady Soft Winds, saw, sitting in the box amongst the thrushes’ feathers, a small person dressed in red, busy making wings! He was Little Prince Fire, and a very great person in the Small People’s World.
‘My dear life! aw, my dear life! What shall I see next?’ cried the little Padstow maid to herself; and what more she would have said is not known, for at that moment the Wise Woman took the tiny crystal bottle out of her hand and put it into the box beside the dinky person within.
‘The Lady Soft Winds have arrived, your Royal Highness,’ she said, ‘and Betty, the little Padstow maid, is also here.’
‘Good!’ piped the tiny man. ‘Bid them sing the Making Song.’
‘We require no bidding, Prince Fire,’ said a little Lady Soft Wind, with gentle dignity, as she and the others alighted on the table. ‘Out of gratitude and love we have come from afar to sing this song, knowing well, unless we sang it, you would never complete the wings. We, as well as you, can never repay the little maid of Padstow Town for releasing us from the witch’s spell.’
The voice had hardly died away when all the radiant fairies began to wave their wings, at first slowly, and then rapidly, in a kind of rhythm, and sang very softly as they waved them.
Betty watched them with all her eyes, and whether it was the movement of their wings or the curious song they sang, with its hush-a-by kind of tune, she felt ever so drowsy, just as she had felt when Little Prince Fire blazed away like a faggot on the hearthstone, and sitting down on the settle, she fell asleep with the two first verses of the song in her ears: