“Leave your white dress here with me,” she said. “Because you will have to deal with the things and the inhabitants of Shadow-Land, and it would, if it touched them, change them all into mists and shadows. Then, too, you must not be recognized.”
Then the Toad-Woman tied Eva’s head up in a cap, so as to hide all her golden curls, and made her wash her face and hands in some water which she gave her. Then she told her to go and look at herself in a little pool of water which was just outside of the grotto, and Eva could not help laughing when she saw herself, for face, hands, cap, and dress were all the same color.
“My cousin lives on the other side of the Cascade of Rocks,” the Toad-Woman went on. “Go to her—one of my servants will show you the way—and ask her to hire you. She will not recognize you, but will take you, and will tell you that if you do your work well you may name your own wages at the end of each week. You will be able to do any work she may give you, and at the end of every week she will ask you what wages you want. Tell her you cannot say without asking your mother. Then she will tell you to go and ask her, and you must then come to me, and I will tell you what to say. In the mean time I will take care of your dress till you need it again.”
Eva listened attentively to all that the Toad-Woman said to her, and thanked her for her advice. And then the woman called her servant, and the same big brown toad who had brought the stool, and who, by the way, was just the color of Eva’s dress, hopped out of his hole, and his mistress bade him take Eva to where the Green Frog lived.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE GREEN FROG.
FOLLOWING the toad, and saying good-bye to his mistress, Eva passed unhurt through the falling stones, and picked her way carefully among those which lay in the bed of the river, till they came to the turn at which she had first caught sight of the Cascade of Rocks. There the toad hopped quickly on shore, and then he hopped across a large plain of mud, in which grew a multitude of toad-stools, and on every toad-stool, or mushroom, there sat either a frog or a toad, and in the mud at their feet were countless numbers of snakes and lizards, their long, shining bodies and tails coiled around the stalks of the toad-stools.
It was almost impossible for Eva to make any progress through the mud, over which the toad, big as he was, hopped so lightly. Still, she succeeded in crossing the field after him, though when they reached a firmer soil, Eva was fairly ashamed of her dress, on which there was so much mud; and when they came to a little pool of clear water, in which she saw herself reflected, she wondered for a moment who that dirty little girl could be; and then she laughed to think how very different this little mud-stained figure was from the white-robed maiden who had passed without a soil or a spot on her dress through the forests of Shadow-Land.