So he leaned over, all knee-deep in the frosting as he was, and he said:
“Bit-bit, say a great truth and a real answer: What is the reason that my little ways don’t bother you? Or kill you? Or keep you from making your garment of sweet-grass?”
“Why,” said Bit-bit, in surprise, but never looking up from his work, “Deevy dear, that’s easy. I’m much, much, much too busy.”
“Scrap of a thing,” said the Deev, “too busy to mind cataracts and an earth trampled to trifles and then frosted with all the air there is?”
“Too busy,” assented Bit-bit, snapping off his thread. “And now I do hope you are not going to wrinkle up things any more.”
“No,” said the Deev, with decision, “I ain’t.” (Deevs are always ungrammatical when you take them by surprise.) And he added very shrewdly, for he was a keen Deev and if he saw that he could learn, he was willing to learn, which is three parts of all wisdom: “Little scrap, teach me to do a witchcraft. Teach me to work.”
At that Bit-bit laid down his task in a minute.
“What do you want to make?” he asked.
The Deev thought for a moment.
“I want to make a palace and a garden and a moat for me,” said he. “I’m tired campin’ around in the air.”