"Just; you would have thought he was a man sometimes, if you had not seen him. The trouble was, his mother let him grow up thinking he was a man. She loved him very much, you see, and—she was a foolish woman. She taught him to think that the inside of a man was what mattered; and that if that were all right,—if he were clean and kind and right-minded, and perhaps neither a fool nor a coward,—people would not mind about the outside. He grew up thinking that."
"Was he quite stupid?" the child asked. "He must have been, I think, Mark."
"Yes, he was very stupid, Snow-white."
"Because he might have looked in the glass, you know."
"Of course he might; he did now and then. But he thought that other women, other people, were like his mother, you see; and they weren't, that was all.
"He was very rich, this dwarf—"
The child's eyes brightened. The story had been rather stupid so far, but now things were going to begin.
Did he live in a gold house? she asked. Did he have chariots and crowns and treasure, bags and bags of treasure? was there a Princess in it? when was he going to tell her about her? why didn't he go on?
"I can't go on if you talk, Snow-white. He was rich, I say, and for that reason everybody made believe that he was a man, and treated him like one. Silly? yes, very silly. But he was stupid, as you say, and he thought it was all right; and everybody was kind, and his mother loved him; and so—he grew up."
"But he still stayed a dwarf?"