“And by what misfortune have you lost your islands and your mountains, good woman?” asked the Duchess.
“I vexed the dwarfs, and they carried me far away from my dominions.”
“Are the dwarfs so powerful?” George asked.
“As they live in the earth,” the old woman answered, “they know the virtue of precious stones, they work in metals, and they unseal the hidden sources of the springs.”
“And what did you do to vex them?” asked the Duchess.
“On a December night,” said the old woman, “one of them came to ask permission to prepare a great midnight banquet in the kitchen of the castle, which, vaster than a chapter-house, was furnished with casseroles, frying-pans, earthen saucepans, kettles, pans, portable-ovens, gridirons, boilers, dripping-pans, dutch-ovens, fish-kettles, copper-pans, pastry-moulds, copper-jugs, goblets of gold and silver, and mottled wood, not to mention iron roasting-jacks, artistically forged, and the huge black cauldron which hung from the pothook. He promised neither to disturb nor to damage anything. I refused his request, and he disappeared muttering vague threats. The third night, it being Christmas, this same dwarf returned to the chamber where I slept. He was accompanied by innumerable others, who pulled me out of bed and carried me to an unknown land in my nightgown. ‘Such,’ they said as they left me, ‘such is the punishment of the rich who refuse even a part of their treasure to the industrious and kindly dwarf folk who work in gold and cause the springs to flow.’”
Thus said the toothless old woman, and the Duchess having comforted her with words and money, she and the two children retraced their way to the castle.
