“That’s plain to be seen,” it answered, and hopped after her in the moonlight.
Suddenly Rosalie began to dig, just on that portion of ground where a shaft of moonlight had fallen. For some time nothing but loose soil came up, but at last the fork hit upon something hard. It did not move till a space had been cleared all round it, and then it appeared nothing but a heavy hard mass of black earth, with an irregular surface.
“Well?” said the frog.
“There are other tools in the cellar beside a fork,” said she. “But we’ve done enough for one night. It can stay now till the morning,” and she took it in both hands, and lifted it out of the deep trench dug about it.
So then once more night reigned undisturbed. But with the morning work began again, this time with finer instruments to chip away the thick layers of soil and find what lay beneath. It took a very long time, much longer than Rosalie ever anticipated, though in other ways the hours passed quickly under this keen absorption. In many places the soil seemed more like marble than rock, and required much patience to remove it, for none of the instruments were particularly sharp, nor specially adapted for that purpose. But what of that? Working, working, ever unceasingly, on went Rosalie, and one day she looked up at the frog, and half laughed, and said:
“I believe my heart is inside here, and I’ll never be happy till it’s free, quite free.”
But the frog only turned away and sighed, and Rosalie was so intent that she never heard the sigh.
And at last!
Bit by bit a brilliant jewel unfolded itself, all flashing green-and-moonlight colour, and with one gleam of ruby red, just one bright gleam upon the middle surface.
And she pressed it to her lips and kissed it. This was no dull stone with intermittent flashes of light. No, this was real—a lovely thing of sparkling colour.