"Is that you, milk broker?"
"No," answered Jimmieboy. "I am the son of the man who didn't blast away the flat rock, and my eye and my ear and my voice want to come in."
"Why, certainly," said the goblin, throwing the door wide open. "I didn't know you were you. Let 'em walk right in."
Jimmieboy was about to say that he didn't know how his eye or his ear or his voice could walk anywhere, but he was prevented from so doing by the sudden disappearance of the staircase, and the substitution therefor of a huge room, the splendor of which was so great that it for a moment dazzled his eyes.
"Who comes here?" said a voice in the corner of the room.
"The eye and the ear and the voice of the son of the man who did not blast the flat stone," observed the goblin, and then Jimmieboy perceived, seated upon a lustrous golden throne, a shriveled-up dwarf, who looked as if he might be a thousand years old, but who, to judge from the crown he wore upon his head, was a king.
The dwarf was clad in garments of the richest texture, and his person was luminous with jewels of the rarest sort. As the goblin announced the visitor the king rose up, and descending from the throne, made a courtly bow to Jimmieboy.
"Thrice welcome, O son of the man who did not blast the flat rock," he said. "It is only fitting that one who owes so much to the father should welcome the eye and the ear and the voice of the son, for know, O boy, that I am the lord of the Undergroundies whose kingdom would have been shattered but for your father's kindly act in sparing it."
"I suppose that blasting the rock would have spoiled all this," said Jimmieboy's voice, as his eye took in the royal magnificence of the place, while to his ears came strains of soft and sweet music. "It would have been dreadful!"
"Much more dreadful than you imagine," replied the little king. "It would have worked damage that a life-time could not have repaired."