Indeed, the hollow in the tree made a good-sized room enough, if a person were not too big. The walls were pleasant to sight, touch, and smell; their colours ran from deepest black-brown up to an orange so rich and warm that it glowed like coals. When you touched the surface, it crumbled a little, soft and sympathetic, as if it came away to please you. The cushion of moss was thicker than any mattress ever made by man; altogether, a delightful place—always supposing one to be the right size. Now the dwarf and the child were exactly the right size, and there seemed no reason why they should not live here all their lives. This was evident to the child.
In one place, a natural shelf ran part way round the tree-wall; and on this shelf lay something that glittered. "What is that that's bright?" the child repeated. "Give it to me, please, dwarf!"
She stretched out her hand with an imperious gesture. The man took the object down, but did not give it to her. "This," he said "is a key, Snow-white."
"Huh!" said the child. "It looks like a pistol. What for a key is it to? where did you get it? is there doors like Bluebeard? why don't you tell me, dwarf?"
"Yes, it does look like a pistol," the man assented, weighing the object in his hand. "But it is a key, Snow-white, to—oh! all kinds of places. I don't know about the Bluebeard chamber; you see, I haven't used it yet. But it is the key of the fields, you understand."
He was speaking slowly, and for the time seemed to forget the child, and to be speaking to himself. "Freedom and forgetfulness; the sting left behind, instead of carried about with one, world without end. The weary at rest—at rest!"
"No wives?" asked the child. The man looked at her with startled eyes. "Wives?" he repeated.
"Dead ones," said the child. "Hanging up by their hairs, you know, dwarf, just heads of 'em, all the rest gone dead. Isn't that awful? Would you go in just the same? I would!"
"No, no wives!" said the dwarf; and he laughed, not his pleasant laugh, but one that sounded more like a bark, the child told him. "No wives!" he repeated; "my own or other people's, Snow-white. What should I have to do with wives, dead or alive?"
The child considered him attentively. "I don't suppose you could get one, anyhow, do you?" she said. "Always, you know, the dwarfs try to get the princesses, but never they do. You never was yellow, was you?" she asked, with a sudden note of apprehension in her voice.