No answer. I closed the box and waited, and am not ashamed to say that I waited in tears. At last after about an hour had passed, during which I had looked in for the hundredth time, I jumped for joy. His little voice had answered.
But it was a tiny voice, even smaller and feebler than usual. I asked him no end of questions most anxiously.
“Speak. What is the matter? How do you feel? What can I do for you? Tell me—why don’t you move?”
“Why,” he replied faintly, “because the water has swollen my joints.” That was it. The dampness had enlarged the wood and shrunk the thread in such a way that the little fellow couldn’t move ever so slightly.
“But you ought to have told me at once,” I said to him reprovingly and in an affectionate tone.
“I couldn’t. I was suffocated by the melted phosphorus. Now I begin to feel stronger.”
“Wait a minute; I will put you near the fire again, and when you are comfortably dry you will be as well as you ever were.”
“I am so afraid of the flames! Shut up the imperial tomb, and don’t put me too near the fire,” he warned me.
“Just keep quiet.”
Three hours later Fiam was completely cured of his cold, and walked carefully, like a person on stilts, around the house.