'Why not—why not?' whispered the rose. 'It is no pain to me to keep awake—and I have no thought of going away unless I am dragged away. And I have sharp thorns.'
Then came the field-mouse—the cousin of the school-mouse—and burrowed quite under the roots of the rose-tree. And there he buried the little key.
'When you want it again you must call me; for you must on no account hurt the rose.'
The rose twined its thorny arms thickly over the entrance and took a solemn oath to guard it faithfully. The butterflies were witnesses.
Next morning Johannes awoke in his own little bed, with Presto, and the clock against the wall. The cord with the key was gone from round his neck.
[IV]
'Children! children! A summer like this is a terrible infliction!' sighed one of three large stoves which stood side by side to bewail their fate in a garret of the old house. 'For weeks I have not seen one living soul or heard one rational remark. And always that hollow within! It is fearful!'
'I am full of spiders' webs,' said the second. 'And that would never happen in the winter.'
'And I am so dry and dusty that I shall be quite ashamed when, as winter comes on, the Black Man appears again, as the poet says.'