"What's the matter?" asked the child, with quick sympathy. "Have you got a pain? is it here? is it in your front? often I have them in my front. You take a tablet, and then you curl up wiz the hot-water bottle, and perhaps it goes away pretty soon. Green apples makes it!" she nodded wisely. "Dwarfs didn't ought to eat them, any more than children. Where is the tree?"
The man did not answer this time. He seemed to be trying to pull up a weight that lay on him, or in him and sat moodily looking on the ground. At last—
"What is your mother's name?" he said; and then one saw that he had got the weight up.
"Evelyn!" said the child.
"Yes, of course!" said the man.
"What makes you say that?" asked the child. "Did ever you see her?"
"Did ever you see a toad with three tails?" said the man.
"Aren't you funny? say, is all dwarfs funny? aren't there really any more of you? didn't there ever was? where did the rest of them go? why do you stay in this place alone? I want to know all those things." She settled herself comfortably, and looked at the man confidently. But he seemed still to be labouring with something.
"Would your mother—would she be very unhappy, if she should come home and find you gone, Snow-white?"
The child opened her eyes at him.