“Oh Diggerfolk, Diggerfolk, have mercy on us! We are lost, and hungry, and have not a friend in the world!”
The little men all muttered and grunted; they did not look unkind.
“Who are you?” asked one of them who carried a great stone hammer.
“I am Peter Dwarf,” replied the boy, bowing his fair, bright head. “And this”—he drew the white cat into his arms—“this is Minka.”
“Peter Dwarf!” exclaimed the one with the hammer, “why do they call you Dwarf? You are as tall and well-shaped a boy as ever I have seen.”
“Because I have blue eyes and yellow hair,” Peter replied, “I was so different from my brothers, and so ugly that my mother said I was not her own son, but a fairy changeling whom the dwarfs have put into the cradle.”
“Ho, ho!” cried a big dwarf with a bunch of keys at his belt, “so they have sent you back where you came from, have they? And do we look as though we were your relatives? No, no, little boy; take up that purring friend of yours and go home to your mother and tell her that this is no place either for her child or her pussy-cat.”
Peter was still kneeling on the ground, and Minka sat between his knees. Now he stretched his arms toward the little men, and implored:
“Oh good kind Diggerfolk, let me go with you and work for you! My mother has not sent me; I ran away, because I would not hurt Minka, and they would have been very angry with me. I will work for you from morning until night, only let me stay!”