The girl lay sleeping in her little bedroom; she had left the window open, because the night was warm. The moon was shining in, but it did not wake her; neither did the little wood-elves, who had climbed up the great vine, and had swarmed in at the window. Such numbers of them! Some were sitting on the pillow stroking her hair, and whispering into her ears, "Sleep, sleep, sleep," and others were holding her eyelids fast closed, so that she could not open them to see what was going on.
Some of them were dancing round in rings upon the soft white coverlet, and others playing all sorts of pranks about the room.
The girl neither saw them nor heard them: she was too fast asleep for that.
She did not even dream of them, but was dreaming of something very different from wood-elves, or mountain-elves, or any other sort of fay or fairy.
No; she dreamed that she heard some one singing—
"Up the stairs, if you will go,
You'll hear a tapping, tapping
At a door, for there you know
A little child is rapping,
Rapping, tapping, all the time,
Tapping, rapping, tapping."
"No, I don't know anything of the kind," said the girl, moving so suddenly in her sleep that a score of wood-elves fell, heels over head, from the bed to the floor.
"If you don't, if you'll go up
The staircase, you will find her;
She won't look round: she never does,
So you can get behind her,"
went on the song.