“I know,” Eva replied; “but I was told that you might be able to tell me where he was.”
“Hum!” the Toad-Woman said. “You have, then, come down the Enchanted River, and seen my sister, the Mist-Woman. But even that won’t help you, though she did let you pass her, and though the stones did not trouble you. I do know where Aster is, but I promised my cousin that I would only tell it to the person who would bring me back the two feathers that her servant the jackdaw stole out of my fan.”
She held up her fan as she said this, and Eva saw that two feathers out of it were gone. And then the child remembered the two feathers which the jackdaw had dropped in the boat, and which, as the trout had advised her, she had brought with her from the brook. So she showed them to the woman, and asked her if these were not the same ones which she had lost. And the Toad-Woman was very much astonished, for they were the very feathers she had been talking about.
“Take a seat,” she said to Eva, “and tell me how you got them.”
And then a great big brown toad hopped out of his hole when he heard his mistress say this, bringing a three-legged stool on his back. He put it down before Eva, and then went back to his hole, and Eva sat down on the stool and looked at the Toad-Woman.
“Now, tell me about it,” said the Toad-Woman.
So Eva had to begin at the beginning and tell the whole story. And every time that she said anything about the green toad the old woman would nod her head, as much as to say, “I know all about that.” But she never interrupted Eva; only when she was done she said to her:
“I am the only person who can help you now, and as you brought me back my feathers, I will do what I can for you. The Green Frog, who has done all this harm, is a distant cousin of mine, but she delights in doing mischief, and we have not been friends since her servant the jackdaw stole the feathers out of my fan. She it is who has got Aster, and you cannot find him until you get his coat, and the piece of it. You will have to work for them, for I cannot help you there; all I can do for you will be to send you where she lives.”
Then Eva thanked the Toad-Woman very earnestly, who told her that she must be content to remain with her for that night, and the next morning that she would tell her where the Green Frog lived, and what she should do when she got there.
So that night Eva slept in the grotto behind the Cascade of Rocks. The Toad-Woman waked her up very early in the morning. She had a dress in her hand, just the color of mud, which she told Eva to put on.