As for poor Amelia, she found no four-leaved clover, and at cockcrow they all went underground.
"We will dance on Hunch Hill to-morrow," said the dwarfs.
All went as before; not a clover plant of any kind did Amelia see, and at cockcrow the revel broke up.
On the following night they danced in the hayfield. The old stubble was now almost hidden by green clover. There was a grand fairy dance—a round dance, which does not mean, as with us, a dance for two partners, but a dance where all join hands and dance round and round in a circle with appropriate antics. Round they went, faster and faster, the pointed shoes now meeting in the centre like the spokes of a wheel, now kicked out behind like spikes, and then scamper, caper, hurry! They seemed to fly, when suddenly the ring broke at one corner, and nothing being stronger than its weakest point, the whole circle were sent flying over the field.
"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the dwarfs, for they are good-humoured little folk, and do not mind a tumble.
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Amelia, for she had fallen with her fingers on a four-leaved clover.
She put it behind her back, for the old tinker dwarf was coming up to her, wiping the mud from his face with his leathern apron.
"Now for our dance!" he shrieked. "And I have made up my mind—partners now and partners always. You are incomparable. For three hundred years I have not met with your equal."
But Amelia held the four-leaved clover above her head, and cried from her very heart—"I want to go home!"
The dwarf gave a hideous yell of disappointment, and at this instant the stock came tumbling head over heels into the midst, crying—"Oh! the pills, the powders, and the draughts! oh, the lotions and embrocations! oh, the blisters, the poultices, and the plasters! men may well be so short-lived!"