He lay on the old woman’s sofa and looked around him in surprise. “How real dreams do seem sometimes,” he said to himself. “I could have been certain that I was a squirrel just now, and had guinea-pigs and squirrels for my companions, also that I had learnt to be a first-rate cook. How Mother will laugh when I tell her all about it, but she will scold me, too, for having fallen asleep in a stranger’s house instead of helping her in the market-place.”
He jumped up in a hurry, but his limbs were stiff from sleeping so long, especially his neck; he could not turn it about very easily, and he seemed so sleepy still that he kept striking his nose against the walls and cupboards.
As he stood upon the threshold the guinea-pigs and squirrels came whimpering round him as though they would like to go with him and he begged them to come, for they were dear little creatures, but they went clattering back in their nut-shell shoes and he could hear them squeaking away in the house.
The old woman had brought him a long distance from the market-place, and he had some difficulty in finding his way back through the narrow lanes, especially as there seemed to be a great crowd of people. Somewhere near he thought there must be a dwarf to be seen, for the people were pushing and craning their necks and calling out to one another, “Just look, what a hideous dwarf! Where can he come from? What a long nose he has, and how his head is sunk between his high shoulders; he has no neck at all, and see what great brown hands he has.”
Jacob would have liked to have seen the dwarf himself, for he always liked to see anything extraordinary, but he could not wait, because he knew he ought to hurry back to his mother.
He felt frightened and nervous when at length he reached the market-place, for his mother looked so altered. He felt sure he could not have slept very long, for she had still a quantity of fruit and vegetables unsold, but she sat with her head leaning on her hand, never calling out to the passers-by to buy her wares. She was paler too, and looked very sad.
He hesitated as to what he should do, but at length he took heart and crept up behind her and, laying his hand caressingly upon her arm, said: “Mother dear, what ails you? Are you angry with me?”
She turned to look at him, but started back with a cry of horror. “What do you want with me, you hideous dwarf,” she cried. “Such jokes are out of place.”
“But, Mother,” said Jacob in alarm, “you cannot be well. Why do you drive your son away?”
“Have I not told you to go away,” said Hannah angrily, “you will get nothing from me by such jokes, you ugly creature.”