“I don’t know berry well,” she said soberly. “You say how.”
“Well,” said the Lady, “if you were my little girl, I should probably be saying to you, ‘Do you like this, dear? Don’t eat it fast. And take little bits of bites.’ And you would say, ‘Yes, mother.’ And then what?”
Littlegirl looked deep down her chocolate. She was making a cave in one side of it, with the foamy part on top for snow. And while she looked the snow suddenly seemed to melt and brim over, and she looked at the lady mutely.
“I don’t know how,” she said; “I don’t know how!”
“Never mind!” said the Lady, very quickly and a little unsteadily, “I’ll tell you a story instead—shall I?”
So the Blue Linen Lady told her a really wonderful story. It was about a dwarf who was made of gold, all but his heart, and about what a terrible time he had trying to pretend that he was a truly, flesh and blood person. It made him so unhappy to have to pretend all the time that he got scandalous cross to everybody, and nothing could please him. His gold kept getting harder and harder till he could move only with the greatest difficulty, and it looked as if his heart were going golden too. And if it did, of course he would die. But one night, just as the soft outside edges of his heart began to take on a shining tinge, a little boy ran out in the road where the dwarf was passing, and in the dark mistook him for his father, and jumped up and threw his arms about the dwarf’s neck and hugged him. And of a sudden the dwarf’s heart began to beat, and when he got in the house, he saw that he wasn’t gold any more, and he wasn’t a dwarf—but he was straight and strong and real. “And so,” the Lady ended it, “you must love every grown-up you can, because maybe their hearts are turning into gold and you can stop it that way.”
“An’ must you love every children?” asked Littlegirl, very low.
“Yes,” said the Lady, “I must.”
“An’ will you love me an’ be my muvver?” asked Littlegirl.