He was standing beside a poor, half-starved-looking little white rabbit, and Cilla heard him say, “Do you consent or will you starve?”
The little white rabbit only blinked and turned away, and then Cilla saw something that made her start, for hanging on a ragged bit of rock was the wedding-dress the Princess was to have worn the night she disappeared.
Cilla did not wait to see more. She dashed toward the dwarf and grabbed him by his long nose, and, giving it a hard twist, she cried out: “Where is my mistress, you wretch? Where is she, I say?”
A very strange thing happened when Cilla gave the long nose a twist; the dwarf howled like the sound of thunder, and instead of the dwarf there stood before Cilla a huge toad that hopped away so fast she could not see where it disappeared.
“You poor half-starved little rabbit,” said Cilla. “I wish I had something to give you to eat, but I must hunt for my mistress first, for I know she must be here.”
Then Cilla thought of the bean. “I’ll give you this,” she said to the rabbit. “I am sure I shall have no use for it.”
When the rabbit swallowed the bean Cilla’s eyes popped wide open, for there stood her mistress, safe and sound.
“Oh, Cilla, you have saved me! How ever did you think of twisting his nose?” asked the Princess.
“Because it looked as if it were made to be twisted,” said Cilla, “but how did you know the bean would change you back to your own form?”
“I didn’t, but I was hungry; that dreadful dwarf was trying to make me say I would marry him by starving me. Some powerful witch had given him the form of a dwarf, and if he could get a princess to marry him she would change him into a man,” said the Princess.