"Dear me!" said Dorothy to herself, "how very intelligent she is! I must have a look at her"; and, pushing the leaves gently aside, she cautiously peeped out.
"PUSHING THE LEAVES GENTLY ASIDE, SHE CAUTIOUSLY PEEPED OUT."
It was a charming little dell, carpeted with fine moss, and with strange-looking wild flowers and tall nodding grasses growing about the sides of it; but, to Dorothy's astonishment, the fairy proved to be an extremely small field-mouse, sitting up like a little pug-dog and gazing attentively at the thicket: "and I think"—the Mouse went on, as if it were tired of waiting for an answer to its last remark—"I think a child should be six inches tall, at least."
This was so ridiculous that Dorothy had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming with laughter. "Why," she exclaimed, "I used to be"—and here she had to stop and count up on her fingers as if she were doing a sum—"I used to be eight times as big as that, myself."
"Tut, tut!—" said the Mouse, and the "tuts" sounded like beads dropping into a pill-box—"tut, tut! Don't tell me such rubbish!"
"Oh, you needn't tut me," said Dorothy. "It's the exact truth."
"Then I don't understand it," said the Mouse, shaking its head in a puzzled way. "I always thought children grew the other way."
"Well, you see,—" said Dorothy, in her old-fashioned way,—"you see, I've been very much reduced." (She thought afterward that this sounded rather as if she had lost all her property, but it was the only thing she could think of to say at the time.)