"Yes, still a dwarf."
"What like did he look? was he puffickly frightful, wiz great goggle eyes and a long twisty nose? was he green? You said once you was green, Mark, before you turned brown."
"Yes, he was rather green; not a bright green, you understand; just a dull, blind sort of green."
"Wiz goggle eyes?"
"N-no! I don't know that they goggled particularly, Snow-white. I hope not.
"Well, when he was grown up,—only he never grew up!—his mother died."
The child was trying hard to be good, but her patience gave out at last, the man was silent so long.
"What is the matter wiz you, Mark? I think this is a stupid story. Didn't anything happen to him at all? why do you bark?"
"Yes, things happened to him. This is a slow story, Snow-white, and you must have patience. You see, I never told it before, and the words don't come just as I want to have them."
The child nodded sympathetically, and promised to be patient; she knew how it was herself sometimes, when she tried to tell a story what she didn't know it very well. Didn't he know this one very well, perhaps? was there another he knowed better?