Old King Cole stepped out of the crowd as Phyllis was wondering what could be done with so many in such small space, and calling for his fiddlers three, demanded an old English dance. There is nothing like ignoring a difficulty when there is no way of doing away with it. The idea of dancing when she was fearful there would not be room for all the guests merely to stand rather took Phyllis's breath away; but everybody seemed to fold himself or herself up to make room, and the couples for the old country dance were on the floor in a twinkling.
"It's because they are used to living in books, so can become quite flat," Bobby Shafto explained to her as he rose to lead out the Sleeping Beauty, who indicated her previous condition by poppies all over her costume and in her hair, but showed no sign of relapsing from decided wakefulness.
"Aren't there people outside of books who are flatter than those in them?" asked Phyllis; but she was not thinking of plays on words, but that the dancers of to-night were probably the actors in the theatricals of last May, who had then learned the old dance, and that if she watched she should discover which were Jessamy and Bab, and which Jessamy's friend, Mr. Lane, in regard to whom she felt considerable curiosity. It was not hard to distinguish Jessamy, who had a certain manner of using her hands all her own. She was the Sleeping Beauty, and Phyllis guessed that Bobby Shafto was Mr. Lane--or should it be the other way?
It was not long before she discovered Bab in the guise of Little Miss Muffet, and a tall Little Boy Blue, with a huge Japanese spider on a sort of small fishing-pole which he dangled before the nervous little person who lunched out of doors on curds and whey, was Tom.
"And who am I?" asked Cinderella's godmother, stopping before Phyllis, smiling behind her muslin mask at the girl's preoccupied face.
"I know who the fairy godmother ought to be," said Phyllis. "If you aren't Mrs. Van Alyn, then it's your own character which is the disguise."
"Bravo! You have been getting clever over there in the land of Athena Junior," laughed the godmother, and her voice proved Phyllis right.
"And me?" cried Cinderella, impatiently. "Who am I?"