“I smell mouse, I smell mouse.” Then there was a swoop of wings, and Fairy Fluffikins promptly drew the mouse into the little hole and stuffed its tail into her mouth so that she might not be heard laughing; and the gruff voice said angrily—
“Where’s that mouse gone? I smelt mouse, I know I smelt mouse!”
She grew tired of this game after a few times, so she left the mouse in the hole and crept away to a new one. She really was a naughty fairy. She blew on the buttercups so that they thought the morning breeze had come to wake them up, and opened their cups in a great hurry. She buzzed outside the clover and made it talk in its sleep, so that it said in a cross, sleepy voice—“Go away, you stupid busy bee, and don’t wake me up in the middle of the night.”
She pulled the tail of the nightingale who was singing to his lady-love in the hawthorn bush, and he lost his place in his song and nearly tumbled over backwards into the garden. Then to her joy she met an elderly, domestic puss taking an evening walk with a view to field-mice.
Here was sport. Fluffikins hid in the grass and squeaked; and when the elderly cat came tearing up she pulled his whiskers and flew away (I forgot to tell you that she had little, soft wings), and the elderly cat jumped and said—
“Mouse-traps and mince-meat! Fancy a cat of my age and experience taking a bat for a mouse! But by my claws I heard a mouse’s squeak.”
Fairy Fluffikins often met the poor elderly cat, and always led him some dreadful dance, now and then taking a ride on his back into the bargain, till he thought he must have got the nightmare.
One day Fairy Fluffikins was well paid out for some of her naughtiness. She was flying away from a tree where she had just wrapped a sleeping bat’s head up in a large cobweb, when she heard the sweep of wings, felt a sharp nip—and in less time than it takes to tell found herself in the nest of the Ancient Owl.
“My wig!” said the Ancient Owl, much surprised, “I thought you were a bat.” And he called his wife and three children to look.
Now when Fairy Fluffikins saw five pairs of large round eyes blinking and staring at her she lost her head and cried out—“Please, please, Mr Ancient Owl, don’t be angry with me and I will never play tricks with mice any more,” and so told the Ancient Owl what he had never even suspected before.