"For my part, I like games that have kissing in them."
Cinderella merely gazed at her, in reply to this, with lifted chin and half-closed eyes.
Then Hansel observed: "If you'd leave it to me, I'd prefer sitting at a table where there'd be something left after you'd filled yourself as full as a drum."
Prince Arthur seemed to feel that Hansel and Grettel had struck a wrong note, and he said, "Upon my word, it seemed to me that the singing and dancing weren't half bad!"
"They were just perfect," declared Everychild.
"That's really what Arthur meant," interposed Will o'Dreams.
There was almost unanimous agreement then that the song and dance had been very well done, the strongest testimony of all being offered by the little black dog, who approached Little Boy Blue and asked, quite as plainly as if he had spoken, to have the entertainment prolonged.
But as the entire band hoped to be on their way early in the morning, it was agreed, after a time, that a good night's sleep was the best thing they could have; and as the sun had now set, they went into the house, and each chose a place in which to spend the night.
The clamor of voices soon sank to a sleepy murmur; and presently there was such silence that the house might indeed have been a haunted one, just as the village superstition held it to be.
There would have been nothing more worth recording in the adventures of that day but for the fact that Everychild, at the last moment, felt an irresistible desire to explore the attic of the old house. And this he undertook to do, after all his companions had, as he supposed, fallen asleep.