"Well, tell us, Glauce, what you know of the dwarfs who carried off Bee."
"Alas! your Highness, I know nothing of the dwarfs who carried her off. And how can an old woman like me know anything? I forgot the little I ever learnt long ago, and I have not even enough memory to remember where I put my spectacles. I often look for them when I have them on. Try this ale, it is nice and cool."
"Your health, Glauce; but I am told your husband knew something about Bee's carrying off."
"It is quite true, your Highness. Though he had never got any education, he knew a great many things that he learnt in inns and taverns. He never forgot anything. If he was still in this world and sitting at this table with us, he could tell you stories by the week. He told me so many and so many of all kinds that they have made a muddle inside my head, and I cannot, at this moment, make head or tail of any of them. It is quite true, your Highness."
Yes, it is quite true, and the head of the old nurse was as useless as an old cracked kettle. George and Freeheart had all the trouble in the world to get any good out of her. At last, by sifting her, they drew out a story which began in this style:
"Seven years ago, your Highness, on the very day you and Bee got into the scrape from which neither of you came back, my late husband went into the hills to sell a horse. It is quite true. He gave his beast a good feed of oats with a dash of cider in it, so that it might have a firm leg and a bright eye; he took it to the market near the hills. His corn and his cider were not lost, for it made his horse sell better. It is the same with beasts as with men; they are judged by appearances. My late husband was pleased at the good business he had done; he offered to drink with his friends, undertaking to drink fair to them. And I must tell you, your Highness, that there was not a man in the whole Clarides who could drink fairer with his friends than my husband. So much so that, on this day, after a great deal of good feeling and harmony, he came back alone in the twilight and took a wrong road, for want of finding the right one. Finding himself near a cavern, he saw as clear as it was possible in his condition and at that hour a band of little men carrying a boy or a girl on a stretcher. He ran away for fear of a mishap, for wine did not deprive him of discretion. But at some distance from the cavern, having let his pipe fall, he bent to pick it up and took hold of a little satin slipper instead. He made a remark about it which he liked to repeat when he was in a good temper. 'This is the first time,' he said to himself, 'that a pipe changes into a slipper.' Now, as this slipper was the slipper of a little girl, he thought that she who had lost it in the wood had been carried off by the dwarfs, and that it was her capture he had seen. He was just on the point of putting the slipper in his pocket when little men, covered with hoods, threw themselves upon him and gave him so many smacks on the head that he remained on the spot quite dazed."
"Glauce! Glauce!" cried George, "it is Bee's slipper! Give it me that I may kiss it a thousand times. It shall lie on my heart for ever, in a bag of scented silk, and when I die it shall be put in my coffin."
"As you please, your Highness; but where will you go to get it? The dwarfs took it back from my poor husband, and he even thought that why he had been so thoroughly beaten was because he tried to put it in his pocket to show the magistrates. He was accustomed to say on the subject when he was in a good temper..."
"Enough! Enough! Only tell me the name of the cave."
"My lord, it is called the cave of the dwarfs, and it is well called so. My late husband..."