“Lazybones,” said the Snail with his great-auntliest air, “look it up on the map!”
So they continued to bow, and the Spider (who didn’t look it up) embroidered a little sampler with these words on it and fastened it over Nikko’s door:
“Here under curtains magnificent dwells
Nikko, the Empress of Everywhere Else!”
PETER DWARF
Once upon a time there was a man who lived in a dark hut under a willow tree. His face, and his wife’s face, and the faces of their six black-haired children, were as dark and gnarled as the willow trunk. But when their seventh son was born, he was a light-haired boy, with clear blue eyes, and a smile like golden sunshine.
“This is not our child!” cried the black-eyed man and the black-eyed woman; “this yellow-haired baby is a changeling; the dwarfs have put him into the cradle!” So they called him Peter Dwarf. They were very unkind to him, and when he grew older they made him do hard, ugly work, like picking nettles and killing lambs. Peter liked to work, but he did not at all like to kill poor little lambs.