A VISIT FROM AN ELF
One evening, as a farmer was crossing a field to his home, what should he see sitting on a stone in the middle of it but a tiny creature! The little thing looked something like a very, very, very small, teeny, weeny, tiny little child. And it was blue and shivering with cold. The farmer saw that it must be an elf.
He knew it would bring him good luck to be kind to it. Besides, he pitied it from his heart. So he took it home and placed it on a stool by the hearth, and fed it with sweet milk. Soon the bantling was warm and lively. He capered and sprang about the kitchen merrier than a cricket, and twice as light-footed.
Well, he didn’t go the next day nor the next nor the next. He stayed for many days. A curious thing about him was that he never spoke. But that did not matter, for he kept the farmer and the farmer’s wife laughing at his tricks.
He and they had many a play together. Sometimes, when the farmer’s wife was not looking, he would creep into the keyhole. Then the farmer would call out, “Find him, wife.”
At this the farmer’s wife would search all about the kitchen, under the chairs, in the closet, behind the wood box, even in the clock case. But she could not find him. Then she would cry out, “Where are you, Tinykins?”
The farmer would chuckle and hee-haw, and slap his knee, and wink, and say,
“He’s neither in,
And he’s neither out;
He’s where something goes in
When the light goes out.”
Quick as the crow flies before the farmer’s empty gun the farmer’s wife would guess, “You’re in the keyhole, Tinykins, you rogue, come out.”
And out he would pop in high glee.
The way he went was as strange as the way he came. I’ll tell you about it
One evening as the little fellow was frisking about the farm kitchen, a shrill voice from the farmyard called three times, “Tolman Grig! Tolman Grig! Tolman Grig!”
“Ho! ho! ho! My daddy is come,” cried the elf, springing up and speaking for the first time.
With that, off he flew through the keyhole.
That was the last the farmer or his wife ever saw of him. But forever after they were happy and prosperous.
—Angela M. Keyes