CHAPTER II.
THE AUNT, THE CAT, AND THE DWARF.
When Hilda, Harold, and Hector were still very young indeed the Queen, their mother, was obliged to make a long journey to a far-off country, and to leave her children behind her. But before going she took them in her arms and said, 'My darlings, though I must leave you, you will not be left alone, either by night or by day. While you are awake you will be protected by a beautiful white cat that I shall send to you, named Tom; and while you are asleep your fairy aunt will keep watch over you; you will not see her, but you will know that she is with you by your pleasant dreams. Only at one hour of the day will you be left unguarded, and that is the hour before sunset. At that hour Tom will have to be away, and your fairy aunt will not yet have arrived, so you must be very careful of yourselves. You will, I hope, try always to be good children; but in the hour before sunset you must try twenty-four times harder than ever. Nobody knows what may happen when a little child does wrong; but there is great danger that the sun might catch fire and the moon freeze up. So, once more, my darlings, be very careful; for every hour is as long as it is short, but the hour before sunset is the longest and the shortest of all.'
The children promised to remember; and their mother kissed them and went away. The same day Tom the Cat arrived. A beautiful big cat he was, with deep soft fur, round yellow eyes, and a tail as thick as a feather duster. He was also the sweetest-tempered cat in the world, so that the children lived with him several years without even so much as suspecting that he had such a thing as a claw about him. He could purr as comfortably as the hopper of a windmill; and he took care of the children better than a dozen nurses would have done. But an hour before sunset every day he always disappeared, and only came back again when the last bit of the sun had gone out of sight. Then he put the children to bed, and purred outside their window until they fell asleep; and as soon as that happened in floated the Fairy Aunt, to kiss their closed eyelids, and to hover beside their beds and whisper in their ears all manner of charming stories about Fairyland, and the wonderful things that were to be seen and done there. But early in the morning, just before they awoke, she would kiss their eyelids once more and flit away out of the round window; and the white cat, with his yellow eyes and his thick tail, would come purring comfortably in at the door.
One day, however (the unluckiest day in the whole year), Hilda, Harold, and Hector went out to play as usual on the round lawn in the centre of the garden. It was Rumpty-Dudget's birthday—the only day in the whole year on which he had power to creep through the hole in the hedge and prowl about the Queen's grounds. Nevertheless, all went well until the last hour before sunset, when Tom the Cat was forced to be away. Before he went he warned the children to look out for the grey rat; but before he had time to explain what he meant by the grey rat the hour struck, and he could not help vanishing. The children were left to themselves; but they were not at all frightened. They had never heard of Rumpty-Dudget; and this is not so strange as it might at first seem; for it often happens in the world that our worst enemies live so close to us that we are not aware of them until after we have fallen into their power. Hilda, Harold, and Hector, at all events, went on playing together very kindly; for up to this time they had never had a quarrel. The only thing that troubled them was, that Tom the Cat was not there to play with them; they all longed to see his yellow eyes and his thick tail, and to stroke his soft back, and hear his comfortable purr. But it was now very near sunset, and he must soon return. The sun, like a great red ball, hung a little way above the edge of the world; though he had not caught fire as yet, he was evidently very hot, and it was quite time for him to be at rest.
All at once Princess Hilda, who had been gazing at the sun with her blue eyes wide open, heard a little croaking laugh, and looking down, she saw a strange little creature standing close beside her, all grey from head to foot. He wore a grey hat and beard, and a long grey cloak that dragged on the ground like a tail, and on his back was a grey hump that made him seem even shorter than he was, though at the most he was hardly over a foot high. Hilda was surprised, but not in the least frightened, for nobody had ever yet done her any harm; and besides, this odd little grey man, though he was as ugly as a rent in a new pinafore, grinned at her from one ear to the other, and seemed to be the most good-natured dwarf in the world. So Princess Hilda called to Prince Harold and Prince Hector, who, when they saw what had come to them, were no more frightened than Hilda, and a good deal more amused; and as the dwarf kept on grinning from one ear to the other the three children began to smile back at him. Meanwhile the great red ball of the sun was slowly dropping downwards; and now his lower rim was just resting on the edge of the world.
Since you have already heard about Rumpty-Dudget you will have guessed that this grey dwarf was none other than he, and that although he grinned so broadly from one ear to the other he wished in reality to do the three children harm; and even (if he could manage it) to carry one of them off to his tower, to stand in the hundred-and-first corner, with his face to the wall and his hands behind his back. But Rumpty-Dudget had no power to do this so long as the children stayed on their side of the prickly hedge; he must first tempt them to creep through the opening, and then, when they were upon his own grounds, he could do with them what he pleased. Now, the children had often been warned not to creep through the hedge, both by their Queen-mother, before she went away, and by their Fairy Aunt in dreams, and by Tom the Cat in the daytime; and as they had never had reason to suppose that there was anything prettier on the other side of the hedge than on their own, they had never thought of going thither. Rumpty-Dudget knew this; and as he was even more cunning than he was ugly he had made up his mind to profit by it.
'My dear young people,' he said, holding out his hands, 'I am very glad to meet you. It has grieved me to see you all playing here on this ugly lawn, when there is a garden so much more beautiful just on the other side of the hedge. I am very fond of children, and I make it my business to amuse them. If you will just give yourselves the trouble to step through that opening in the hedge you shall see something that you never saw before.'
The three children thought this sounded very pleasant; but, after a pause, Princess Hilda, who generally took the lead, said: