'It is a little difficult to choose, you see,' said Leonore, who felt quite at ease with the gnome ladies, 'as we do not know what the things are—though,' she added quickly, 'they look very nice.'
The small woman looked rather disappointed.
'They should not be strange to you,' she said. 'They are all—or nearly all—made of our upper-world supplies, as we thought you would prefer them. The dish before you contains blackberries, with just a touch of pine-cone flavouring; the one opposite is wild honey—we deal regularly with the bees through the flower-fairies, who understand their language. Then these are cakes of acorn flour, and the jelly at the other side is a special recipe of our own made from the moss which grows thickly where the streamlets trickle down from the upper world.'
'Thank you,' said Hildegarde again, 'may I have some blackberries? It is very late for them, isn't it?'
Their hostess shook her head.
'They are not freshly gathered,' she said, 'but they are just as good—nothing ever gets stale in our rock larders.'
'How very convenient,' said Hildegarde, as she tasted the blackberries. They were not bad, though they had a curious aromatic flavour. But after all, it did not much matter, as one good-sized teaspoon would have held all her helping!
Leonore had chosen a tiny cake and honey, and then their hospitable friend insisted on both children tasting every other dish on the table, which they had to do, though in one or two cases they tried to hide how very little they took. The moss jelly was decidedly peculiar!
'Aren't you going to eat anything yourselves?' Leonore inquired. The gnome ladies gave a wail of disapproval—such a thing was quite contrary to their ideas of good manners.
'Never, never would we be so rude,' they said. And the children, remembering the fairy's warning, said no more on this point, for fear of offending even these meek little women.