II.
The girl lay sleeping in her little bedroom; she had left the window open, because the night was warm. The moon was shining in, but it did not wake her; neither did the little wood-elves, who had climbed up the great vine, and had swarmed in at the window. Such numbers of them! Some were sitting on the pillow stroking her hair, and whispering into her ears, "Sleep, sleep, sleep," and others were holding her eyelids fast closed, so that she could not open them to see what was going on.
Some of them were dancing round in rings upon the soft white coverlet, and others playing all sorts of pranks about the room.
The girl neither saw them nor heard them: she was too fast asleep for that.
She did not even dream of them, but was dreaming of something very different from wood-elves, or mountain-elves, or any other sort of fay or fairy.
No; she dreamed that she heard some one singing—
"Up the stairs, if you will go,
You'll hear a tapping, tapping
At a door, for there you know
A little child is rapping,
Rapping, tapping, all the time,
Tapping, rapping, tapping."
"No, I don't know anything of the kind," said the girl, moving so suddenly in her sleep that a score of wood-elves fell, heels over head, from the bed to the floor.
"If you don't, if you'll go up
The staircase, you will find her;
She won't look round: she never does,
So you can get behind her,"
went on the song.
"And what will be the use of that?" murmured the girl in her dream.
"Why, you will help her, I suppose,
To reach up to the knocker.
You must not startle her, for that
Most certainly would shock her."
"It was the sea and the castle in the sunlight," said the girl, "and now it is something quite as ridiculous: a little child standing at a door knocking. That comes in the moonlight. And the music is going on all the time."
She was speaking quite loudly now, and she suddenly opened her eyes, in spite of the wood-elves, who crept down from the bed and hid themselves in the folds of the curtains, for they did not want the girl to know that they were there.
"It's the music that has waked me," said the girl, getting up in bed and listening; "it's the same song over and over again, only I can't make out the words, excepting, 'Come, come, come,' and then something about the sea. But that is very absurd, for there is no sea near here. The moon knows that as well as I do, for the moon looks down, and sees that there are only fields and woods and orchards, and beautiful gardens full of flowers. I wish I were not dreaming all the time. The music is a dream too; I thought it was the nightingale: and I dare say it is, and that if I looked out of the window I should see about a dozen nightingales sitting in a row, for it would take a dozen quite to make such loud music as I hear in the moonlight."
And the girl shook back her long hair, and jumped out of bed and went to the window; but she could see nothing, for pressed tightly against the window was a great white lily, just like the one she had thrown down, only instead of being of the ordinary size, it was so large that it covered all the panes of glass and also the open part of the window, so that it was quite impossible to look out. The stalk was towards her.
"I'm like an umbrella white,
Keeping off the sun or rain;
Keeping out the bright moonlight,
Keeping in the wood-elves' train,
said the lily. Then it continued—
"Yes, you threw me down in fright,
But I've come to you to-night.
Take me in your hand, and see
What will then my purpose be."
The girl was silent for a moment; everything was so strange: the beautiful music, the talking brook, and now the talking flower.
"I will not have anything to do with any of you," she said, giving the flower a push to send it away from the window.
But no sooner had she touched it than the flower shrank to its natural size, and remained in her hand, which was so tightly closed that she could not open it again.
"Away, away,
Each elf and fay!"
murmured the lily; and there was a soft rush as of many tiny wings, and the girl felt herself carried through the air.
This was the work of the wood-elves, who were there to help the lily. But the girl scarcely knew what was happening; she was listening to the music, which was so grand and beautiful that she forgot everything else.
"she held the lily in her hand"