BY this time the Rainbow Cat was getting a little tired of travelling about, and decided that he would go home and have a good rest after his many exertions. But on the way back he had to pass through the Ever After country, and the people who lived there were most pressing in their request that he should spend a little time with them.
The Ever After country is inhabited by all the Fairy Tale and Nursery Rhyme people, who go to live there when their adventures are over.
Cinderella and her prince have a beautiful castle there, where the glass slipper is kept on a red velvet cushion in a little gilt cabinet, and shown to distinguished visitors. Cinderella never had another pair; she said they were very uncomfortable, and of course she was always afraid some one might tread on her toes.
Her two disagreeable sisters have a little house of their own. They have taken to gardening, and keep bees and chickens, and are altogether immensely improved, so that everybody is quite fond of them.
They are rather sensitive about their past, and are both, alas! a little lame, because, as you will remember, they cut pieces off their feet in order to make them smaller.
Snow-White, too, lives in a castle with her husband. The seven dwarfs have a fine carpenter’s shop on the estate, where they are kept very busy indeed.
They make the most lovely little chairs and tables for Snow-White’s children, and do most of the work of that kind required by the dwellers in the Ever After land.
Red-Riding-Hood and her grandmother have a pretty cottage close to that of Cinderella’s sisters. Red-Riding-Hood often runs in to have a chat with them, and they are very kind about sending in honey and eggs for the old lady.
Of course, there are many, many more people. Jack the Giant-Killer, who has grown rather fat and lazy, but loves to talk about all his great fights; Little Miss Muffet, who is still a bit afraid of spiders; Boy Blue, Mother Hubbard, Aladdin—it would take me all day to mention half of them, but they are all there, not one is missing.
The Rainbow Cat stayed with Fatima, Bluebeard’s last wife, who lives with the two brothers who saved her life by their valour.