The child sprang up and clapped her hands. "Mark," she cried, "I will be him!"
"On a pillar?" said the dwarf. "See, you have frightened Simeon away, and he hadn't had half enough; and you couldn't possibly climb his tree, Snow-white."
"In your tree! in the hole! it will be just as good as Little Kid Milk. Not in any of the stories a little girl did that; all mineself I will do it. I love you, Mark!"
She flung her arms around his neck and hugged him till he choked. When the soft arms loosened their hold, his eyes were dark.
"You love me because I have a tree?" he said, "and because you like the things in the china pots?"
"Yes!" said the child, "and because you are a dwarf, and because you are nice. Most because you are nice, Mark, when those other dwarfs is yellow and horrid and all kinds of things."
"All right!" said the dwarf. "I love you, too. Now soon we are coming to the cow. We must hurry, Snow-white."
But it was not easy to hurry. He had to look and see how the ferns were unrolling, and to say what they looked like. The child thought they were like the little brown cakes, only green, what you bought them at the cake-shop. Didn't he know the cake-shop? but could he buy things? did they let dwarfs buy things just as if they were mans? could he have money, or did he have to dig up pearls and diamonds and rubies, out of the ground? was there a place here where he dug them up? when would he show it to her?
Then there were the anemones just out; and at sight of them the child jumped up and down, and had to be told what they were. The name was very funny, she thought.
"I can make a song wiz that!" she said, and then she sang: