But the cobbler puzzled and puzzled about who was helping him. No matter how late he sat up, nor how early he rose in the morning, he never saw anyone, and he never heard a sound.
At last he determined he would watch all night and find out who was doing the work. So when his wife went off to bed he hid himself behind some clothes that were hanging in the corner, and stayed there as still as a mouse. No one would have known there was anybody in the room. The moon shone in at the window and all the house was still.
Suddenly he saw two little brown fairy-men there in the room, but where they came from he could not tell. It was cold winter weather, but neither of them had on coats or shoes or trousers. They picked up the pieces of leather and looked at them, and then they sat down cross-legged and began to work. They fitted and sewed and hammered, so fast that in a short time all the shoes were done. The two little men set them in a row on the bench, and nodded to each other as though they were well pleased, and then they went as they came, without a sound, and the cobbler could not tell what had become of them.
The next day the cobbler told his wife all that he had seen the night before. The two talked it over for a long time.
“We ought to do something to show our gratitude to the little men,” said his wife. “How would it be if I made a little shirt and a suit for each of them, and you can make them each a pair of shoes.”
To this the cobbler agreed. He went out and bought some fine cloth and cambric, and buttons and also some soft thin leather.
Then his wife set to work and made two little shirts and two little suits all complete, even to the pockets and buttonholes, and the cobbler made two tiny pairs of shoes. When all was finished, they laid the clothes out on the bench, and that night they left a light burning and hid themselves in the corner behind the clothes, to see what would happen. The clock ticked on, and suddenly they saw the two little brown men there in the room, moving quietly about, though how they had come there neither the cobbler nor his wife knew.
The little men went to the bench where the leather was generally laid out, and there, instead of leather pieces were the two little suits of clothes and the two little pairs of shoes. The brownies took up the clothes piece by piece and examined them; they held them up and turned them this way and that. Last of all they put the clothes on, and they fitted exactly. Then they began to dance with glee, and to sing:
“How fine we be, how fine we be!
Now we never will work again!”