Poor Etelka rejoiced to see him go. She had learned to fear her brothers and almost to dislike them.
The day after he went, she begged her father to carry her in his arms to the edge of the forest and lay her under a tree. She wanted to feel the wind in her face again, she said. He consented at last, though grumbling a little at the trouble. Etelka was comfortably placed on a bear-skin under the shade of a spreading fir, and after a while, as her eyes were closed and she seemed to be asleep, her father stole away and left her. She was in full sight of the hut, so there seemed no danger in leaving her alone.
But Etelka was not asleep. She was thinking with all her might, thinking of the fairy, wishing she could see him again and ask him to undo the fatal gift which had brought such misery into her life.
Suddenly, as she lay thinking these thoughts, her cheek was tickled sharply. She opened her eyes. There stood the same odd little figure in green which she had seen before; as then a grass-blade was in his hand, and leaning over his shoulder was his gossip Thimblerig. Etelka almost screamed in her joy.
"Thou seemest pleased to see us," remarked Pertzal with a mocking smile.
"Oh, I am glad, indeed I am," cried poor Etelka. "Dear kind Herr Fairy, have pity! Don't let me dance gold any more!"
"What! Tired already? What queer creatures mortals be!" began Pertzal teasingly; but the kinder Thimblerig interposed.
"Tired of her gift, of course she is! You knew she would be when you gave it, Gossip! Don't plague the poor child. Look how thin she has grown. But, Etelka, I must tell thee that when once a fairy has granted to a mortal his wish, he has no power to take it back again."
"What!" cried Etelka in despair, "must I then go on dancing forever till I die?"
"He cannot take it back," repeated Thimblerig. "But do not cry so; there is another way. A second fairy can grant a wish which will contradict the first, and so all may be made right. Now, Etelka, I have a kindness for thee as well as Pertzal here, and like him I have the right to grant a favor to a mortal. Now, listen. Dance thee never so well or dance thee never so long, from henceforward shall never gold-piece lie under foot of thine for all thy dancing! And, furthermore, if ever thou art married to a man whom thou lovest, I endow thee with this gift, that when thou dancest with will and because thy heart is light, violets and daisies and all sweet blossoms shall spring at thy tread, till all about thee is as a garden."