"Ho, ho!" said he, "you can dance, can you?"
"When I am happy I can," said Amelia, performing several graceful movements as she spoke.
"What are you pleased about now?" snapped the dwarf, suspiciously.
"Have I not reason?" said Amelia. "The dresses are washed and mended."
"Then up with them!" returned the dwarf. On which half-a-dozen elves popped the whole lot into a big basket and kicked them up into the world, where they found their way to the right wardrobes somehow.
As the woman of the heath had said, Amelia was soon set to a new task. When she bade the old woman farewell, she asked if she could do nothing for her if ever she got at liberty herself.
"Can I do nothing to get you back to your old home?" Amelia cried, for she thought of others now as well as herself.
"No, thank you," returned the old woman; "I am used to this, and do not care to return. I have been here a long time—how long I do not know; for as there is neither daylight nor dark we have no measure of time—long, I am sure, very long. The light and noise up yonder would now be too much for me. But I wish you well, and, above all, remember to dance!"
The new scene of Amelia's labours was a more rocky part of the heath, where grey granite boulders served for seats and tables, and sometimes for workshops and anvils, as in one place, where a grotesque and grimy old dwarf sat forging rivets to mend china and glass. A fire in a hollow of the boulder served for a forge, and on the flatter part was his anvil. The rocks were covered in all directions with the knick-knacks, ornaments, &c., that Amelia had at various times destroyed.
"If you please, sir," she said to the dwarf, "I am Amelia."