“There is an invisible cloak hanging on that peg. Get into that,” cried cook, quite beside herself.
But Blunder could no more see the cloak than he could see the shoes, the closet, and the meal-chest; and no doubt the goblin, whose hand was on the latch, would have found him prancing around the kitchen, and crying out, “I can’t find it,” but, fortunately for himself, Blunder caught his foot in the invisible cloak, and tumbled down, pulling the cloak over him. There he lay, hardly daring to breathe.
“What was all that noise about?” asked the goblin gruffly, coming into the kitchen.
But as he could see nothing amiss, he went grumbling upstairs again, while the shoes took Blunder up chimney, and landed him in a meadow, safe enough, but so miserable! He was cross, he was disappointed, he was hungry. It was dark, he did not know the way home, and, seeing an old stile, he climbed up, and sat down on the top of it, for he was too tired to stir. Just then came along the South Wind, with his pockets crammed full of showers, and, as he happened to be going Blunder’s way, he took Blunder home. The boy was glad enough of this, only he would have liked it better if the Wind had not laughed all the way. For what would you think, if you were walking along a road with a fat old gentleman, who went chuckling to himself, and slapping his knees, and poking himself, till he was purple in the face, when he would burst out in a great windy roar of laughter every other minute?
“What are you laughing at?” asked Blunder, at last.
“At two things that I saw in my travels,” answered the Wind; “a hen, that died of starvation, sitting on an empty peck-measure in front of a bushel of grain; and a little boy who sat on the top of the Wishing-Gate, and came home because he could not find it.”
“What? what’s that?” cried Blunder; but just then he found himself at home. There sat his godmother by the fire, her mouse-skin cloak hung up on a peg, and toeing off a spider’s silk stocking an eighth of an inch long; and though everybody cried, “What luck?” and, “Where is the Wishing-Gate?” she sat mum.
“I don’t know where it is,” answered Blunder. “I couldn’t find it;” and thereon told the story of his troubles.
“Poor boy!” said his mother, kissing him, while his sister ran to bring him some bread and milk.
“Yes, that is all very fine,” cried his godmother, pulling out her needles, and rolling up her ball of silk; “but now hear my story. There was once a little boy who must needs go to the Wishing-Gate, and his godmother showed him the road as far as the turn, and told him to ask the first owl he met what to do then; but this little boy seldom used his eyes, so he passed the first owl, and waked up the wrong owl; so he passed the water-sprite, and found only a frog; so he sat down under the pine-tree, and never saw the crow; so he passed the Dream-man, and ran after Jack-o’-Lantern; so he tumbled into the goblin’s chimney, and couldn’t find the shoes and the closet and the chest and the cloak; and so he sat on the top of the Wishing-Gate till the South Wind brought him home, and never knew it. Ugh! Bah!” And away went the fairy godmother up the chimney in such deep disgust that she did not even stop for her mouse-skin cloak.