As the old couple were beginning to toddle across the garden, the children suddenly asked if their little dead brothers and sisters were there too. At the same moment, seven little children, who, up to then, had been sleeping in the house, came tearing like mad into the garden. Tyltyl and Mytyl ran up to them. They all hustled and hugged one another and danced and whirled about and uttered screams of joy.
"Here they are, here they are!" said Granny. "As soon as you speak of them, they are there, the imps!"
Tyltyl caught a little one by the hair:
"Hullo, Pierrot! So we're going to fight again, as in the old days!... And Robert!... I say, Jean, what's become of your top?... Madeleine and Pierrette and Pauline!... And here's Riquette!..."
Mytyl laughed:
"Riquette's still crawling on all fours!"
Tyltyl noticed a little dog yapping around them:
"There's Kiki, whose tail I cut off with Pauline's scissors.... He hasn't changed either...."
"No," said Gaffer Tyl, in a voice of great importance, "nothing changes here!"
But, suddenly, amid the general rejoicings, the old people stopped spell-bound: they had heard the small voice of the clock indoors strike eight!