But it wasn’t for long that he skipped on the skin; it wasn’t for long that he yelled.
For when the goblin had tired himself out, he looked round the ledge, and a queer feeling came over him.
You see, the goblin had got used to Quest. Never before had he had such an easy time as with that good youth. He had been allowed to fool about as he chose, without anybody scolding him or telling him to stop; and now that he came to think of it, he would have to go back to the osier clump, to the mire, to his angry King Rampogusto, and go on repeating the old goblin chatter among five hundred other goblins—all of them just as he used to be himself.
He had lost the habit of it. He began to think—to think a very little. He began to feel sad—just a little sad, then more and more miserable; and at last he was wringing and beating his hands, and the silly, thoughtless goblin, who a minute ago had been yelling with glee, was now weeping and wailing with grief and rolling about on the coat all crazy with distress.
He wept and he howled till all his former yelling was clean nothing in comparison. For a goblin is always a goblin. Once he starts wailing he wails with a vengeance. And he pulled the fur out of the skin-coat in handfuls, and rolled about on it as if he had taken leave of his senses.
Now just at that moment Bluster and Careful came to the lone ledge.
They had wandered all over the mountain, and were now on their way home to the glade to see if their grandfather and the cabin were quite burnt up. On the way back they came to a lone ledge where they had never been before.
Bluster and Careful heard something wailing, and caught sight of Quest’s skin-coat; and they thought at once that Quest must have come to grief somehow.
Not that they felt sorry for their brother because they could not grieve for anybody while the goblins were about them.
But at that moment their goblins began to wriggle, because they could hear that one of their own kind was in trouble. Now there is no sort that sticks more closely together and none more faithful in trouble than the hobgoblins were. In the osier clump they would fight and squabble all day; but if there was trouble each would give the skin off his shins for the other!