"No, Snow-white, never yellow; only green."
The child bubbled over. "Was you truly green?" she cried. "Isn't that funny, dwarf? and then you turned brown, didn't you? you don't suppose I'll turn brown, do you? because I ain't green, am I? but I was just thinking, suppose you should be the Yellow Dwarf, wouldn't it be awful?"
"Probably it would. He was a pretty bad sort of fellow, was he, Snow-white? I—it's a good while since I heard anything about him, you see."
"Oh, he was just puffickly frightful! He—Do you want me to tell you the story, dwarf?"
Yes, the dwarf wanted that very much indeed.
"Well, then, if I tell you that, you must tell me one about some dwarfs what you knew. I suppose you knew lots and lots of them, didn't you? Was they different colours? was they blue and green and red? what made you turn brown when you was green? well!
"Once they was a queen, and she had twenty children, and they was all dead except the Princess All-fair, and she wouldn't marry any of the kings what wanted to marry her, and so her mother went to ask the Desert Fairy what she should do wiz her. So she took a cake for the lions, and it was made of millet and sugar-candy and crocodiles' eggs, but she went to sleep and lost it. Did ever you eat a cake like that? should you think it would be nasty? I should! Well, and so there was the Yellow Dwarf sitting in the tree—why, just the way you are, dwarf. We might play I was the queen, and you was the Yellow Dwarf. Let's play it."
"But I don't want to be a horrid one," the man objected, "and I want to hear the story, besides."
"Oh, well, so I will. Well, he said he would save her from the lion, if she would let him marry the Princess, and she didn't want to one bit, but she said she supposed she'd have to, so he saved her, and she found herself right back there in the palace. Well, and so then she was very unhappy all the time, and the Princess didn't know what upon earth was the matter wiz her, so she thought she would go and ask the Desert Fairy. So she went just the same way what her mother went, but she ate so many oranges off the tree that she lost her cake, too. That was greedy, don't you think so?"
"Very greedy! she was old enough to know better."