“I beg your pardon,” she began again, after waiting a minute or two to see if they had nothing else to say; “I don’t quite understand.”
“Nor do we,” they replied promptly, speaking for the first time both together.
“Do you mean you don’t know what my name is?” said she. “It’s Olive, Olive” for the dwarfs stood staring as if they had not heard her. “Olive!” she repeated for the third time.
“Green?” asked the first.
“No!” said Olive. “Of course not! Green is a very common name—at least——”
“But you called us ‘blue,’” said the second; and it really was a relief to hear him finish a sentence comfortably by himself, only Olive felt very puzzled by what he said.
“How do you know?” she said. “How could you tell I called you the blue dwarfs?” and then another thought suddenly struck her. How very odd it was that the dwarf spoke such good English! “I thought you were German,” she said.
“How very amusing!” said the dwarfs, this time again speaking together.
Olive could not see that it was very amusing, but she was afraid of saying so, for fear it should be rude.
“And about the fir-cones,” went on the first dwarf. “It is distressing to think they were so underdone. But we have come, all of us,” waving his hand in the direction of the others, “to invite you to supper in our village. There you will find them done to perfection.”