“There, my child, eat that. It contains the magic herb I could not find in the market. Why did your mother not have it? Whoever eats that will become a magic cook.”
Jamie had never tasted such delicious soup. It seemed to intoxicate him. It produced a stupor. He felt a great change coming over him. He seemed to become one of the family of guinea pigs and squirrels, and, like them, to serve their mistress. Delightful little people they were,—he came to regard them as brothers; and time flew by.
Years flew by, and other years, when one day the dame took her crutch and went out. She left her herb-room open, and he went in. In one of the secret cupboards he discovered an herb that had the same scent as the soup he had eaten years before. He examined it. The leaves were blue and the blossoms crimson. He smelt of it.
He began to sneeze,—such a delightful sneeze! He smelt, and sneezed again. Suddenly he seemed to awake, as from a dream,—as though some strange enchantment had been broken.
“I must go home,” he said. “How mother will laugh when I tell her my dream! I ought not to have gone to sleep in a strange house.”
He went out into the street. The children and idlers began to follow him.
“Oho, oho! look, what a strange dwarf! Look at his nose! Never the like was seen before.”
Jamie tried to discover the dwarf, but could not see him.
He reached the market. His mother was there, a sad old woman, in the same place. She seemed altered; looked many years older than when he left her. She leaned her head wearily on her hand.
“What is the matter, mother dear?” he asked.