There also was Miller Dick with his broad thumbs, counting over a rich pile of gold, which, ever and anon, spun up into the air, and went strewing itself like dead leaves before the wind. Then he too must needs up and after it, till it was all caught again, and added together, and made right.
There were small playmates of Tulip's childhood, each with its little conceit of treasure: one had a toy, and another a lamb, another a bird; and all of them hunted and caught the thing they loved, and kissed it and again let go. So it went on, over and over again, more sad than the sight of a quaker as he twiddles his thumbs.
Whenever they were at peace for a moment, they turned their eyes his way. 'What, you here too, Tulip?' was always the thing they seemed to be saying.
While Tulip sat looking at them, and thinking of it all, suddenly his lady disappeared, and only her green feet darted from his side and began running round and round in a circle. Then was he just about to set off running after them, when he felt himself caught up to the coloured fires of the roof and sent spinning ungovernably through space. Suddenly he was dumped to the ground, and just as his feet were gathering themselves up under him he heard the Angelus bell ringing from the village below the slopes of the wood.
He was standing again by the side of the Wishing-Pot, and the old woman sat cowering, and blinking her spider-eye at him, too much astonished to speak or move.
Tulip looked at her with a pleasant and engaging air. 'Oh, good mother, what a treat you have given me!' he said. 'How I wish I had money for another wish! what a pity it was ever to have wished myself back again!'
When the old witch heard that she thought still to entrap him, and answered joyfully, 'Why, kind Sir, surely, kind Sir, if you like it you shall look again! Take another wish, and never mind about the money.' So she said the spell once more which opened to him the wonders of the Wishing-Pot.
Then cried Tulip, clapping his hands, 'What better can I wish than to have you in the Wishing-Pot, in the place of all those poor folk whom you have imprisoned with their wishes!'
Hardly was the thing said than done; all the children who had been Tulip's playmates, and Miller Dick with his broad thumbs, and the dairyman's wife, were every one of them out, and the old witch woman was nowhere to be seen.
But Tulip put his eye to the mouth of the Wishing-Pot; and there down below he saw the old witch, running round and round as hard as she could go, pursued by a herd of green spiders. And there without doubt she remains.