"Oh, what a beautiful, beautiful cake! only we haven't got a knife to cut it."
The boys felt in all their pockets, but somehow their knives never were there when they were wanted.
"Look! you've got one in your hand!" said Brownie to the little one; and that minute a bit of stick she held turned into a bread-knife—silver, with an ivory handle—big enough and sharp enough, without being too sharp. For the youngest girl was not allowed to use sharp knives, though she liked cutting things excessively, especially cakes.
"That will do. Sit you down and carve the dinner. Fair shares and don't let any body eat too much. Now begin, ma'am," said the Brownie, quite politely, as if she had been ever so old.
Oh, how proud the little girl was. How bravely she set to work, and cut five of the biggest slices you ever saw, and gave them to her brothers and sisters, and was just going to take the sixth slice for herself, when she remembered the Brownie.
"I beg your pardon," said she, as politely as he, though she was such a very little girl, and turned round to the wee brown man. But he was nowhere to be seen. The slices of cake in the children's hands remained cake, and uncommonly good it was, and such substantial eating that it did nearly the same as dinner; but the cake itself turned suddenly to a stone again, and the knife into a bit of stick.
For there was the Gardener coming clumping along by the bank of the lake, and growling as he went.
"Have you got the kangaroo?" shouted the children, determined to be civil, if possible.
"This place is bewitched, I think," said he, "The kangaroo was fast asleep in the cow-shed. What! how dare you laugh at me?"
But they hadn't laughed at all. And they found it no laughing matter, poor children, when Gardener came on the ice, and began to scold them and order them about. He was perfectly savage with crossness; for the people at Giles's Farm had laughed at him very much, and he did not like to be laughed at—and at the top of the field he had by chance met his mistress, and she asked him severely how he could think of leaving the children alone.