The gnome nodded.
'That's our principal dealing with your world,' he said. 'You don't mean to say you thought all the toys your shops are full of are made by clumsy human fingers! You should see our toy factory about Christmas-time. Santa Claus has a time of it, choosing and settling, I can tell you.'
Hildegarde and Leonore were breathless with eagerness.
'Oh, how interesting!' they exclaimed. 'Mayn't we see the toy factory? Do tell us which way to go to get to it.'
But to their disappointment the little packer shook his head.
'Can't be done,' he said. 'Doors are closed to all visitors for six months before Christmas. That's the arrangement with Santa Claus. It would never do for it to leak out about the new inventions before the time. You can see some of the regular toys over there where they're packing, for even on them we're always improving.'
The children saw that it was no use persisting, for there was something very decided about the gnomes' manner even when they were the most amiable. And the small man was busily at work again. So they made their way quietly to the other side of the tent.
There they saw displayed, waiting to be packed, a good many toys they had often seen before, and some not so familiar. There were queer little doll gnomes, or groups of them for ornaments—not very like those the children had seen alive in one way, for as a rule the living gnomes were grave and pompous, and the figures were represented as laughing and rollicking.
'They must be taken from the young gnomes, the ones who are only two or three hundred years old,' said Leonore, smiling. 'But, oh, Hildegarde, do look at that doll-house furniture half packed over there. Isn't it too lovely? I've often wondered—haven't you?—how people's fingers could make such tiny things, but now I understand. Oh, I do wish we could have seen the toy manufactory!'
But it was no use wishing. None of the packers took much notice of them, so they thought it as well to pass out of the tent, trusting that somehow or other they would find their way home, for they were sure that the spinning-wheel fairy would not forget them.