In a wonderfully short time the child was enveloped in the blue silk shawl, and sitting on the kitchen-table cross-legged like a small idol, watching the dwarf while he washed the dress. He was handy enough at the washing, and before long the pink frock was moderately clean (some of the stains would not come out, and could hardly be blamed for it), and was flapping in the wind on a low-hanging branch. Now, the child said to the dwarf, was the time for him to tell her a story. What story? Oh, a story about a dwarf, any of the dwarfs he used to know, only except the Yellow Dwarf, or the seven ones in the wood, or the one in "Snow-white and Rosy Red," because she knowed those herself.
The dwarf smiled, and then frowned; then he lighted his pipe and smoked for a time in silence, while the child waited with expectant eyes; then, after about a week, she thought, he began.
"Once upon a time—"
The child nodded, and drew a long breath of relief. She had not been sure that he would know the right way to tell a story, but he did, and it was all right.
"Once upon a time, Snow-white, there was a man—"
"Not a man! a dwarf!" cried the child.
"You are right!" said Mark Ellery. "I made a mistake, Snow-white. Not a man,—a dwarf! I'll begin again, if you like. Once upon a time there was a dwarf."
"That's right!" said the child. She drew the blue shawl around her, and sighed with pleasure. "Go on, Mark."
"The trouble is," he went on, "he—this dwarf—was born a man-thing, a man-child; it was not till his nurse dropped him that it was settled that he was to be a dwarf-thing, and never a man. That was unfortunate, you see, for he had some things born with him that a dwarf has no business with. What things? Oh, nothing much; a heart, and brains, and feelings; that kind of thing."
"Feelings? If you pinched him did it hurt, just like a man?"