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“I cannot work in the rice-fields to-day,” she said to herself, “for the procession is so interesting that I have to stand by the roadside and watch. I had better go into the woods, where I can’t see it, and pick some mushrooms for dinner.”
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So she took her basket and went into the woods. But before she had picked the first handful, she saw a tremendous scarlet toadstool spangled all over with silver dots, swaying on a tall silvery stem. It was the most enormous toadstool she had ever seen, so big that Nikko could have hidden under its flapping top. She wanted to pull it up and carry it as a parasol, but just then she looked over the edge and noticed that a pearly Snail and a golden Spider were sitting on top having tea together. The Snail turned around and stuck out his eyes at her like opera-glasses.
“Excuse me,” said Nikko. “I almost picked your toadstool for a parasol! I didn’t see you.”
“Why should a little girl want a parasol?” asked the Snail as solemnly as a great-aunt. “You’re very vain.”
“Oh no indeed,” replied Nikko. “But I should like to pretend I was a grand lady, going to the Emperor’s palace to-day. I should love to see the Emperor.”
“So should I,” said the Spider.
“Well, so should I,” admitted the Snail. “Why don’t you go?”
“Ah, but look at me!” cried Nikko sadly. “I have on a hempen frock and my feet are bare and I have not a single jewel, only this string of red berries round my neck! But to ride in the procession one must sit on a pearly throne and wear a silken gown and jewelry and carry a pretty parasol. I have none of these things.”
“I will make you a dress more beautiful than silk,” said the Spider, “if you will take me along to see the Emperor!”
“And I could take the toadstool for a parasol, if you wouldn’t mind having tea somewhere else,” Nikko said. “But alas! what should I do for a pearly throne?”
“Well, now you mention it,” chimed in the Snail, “if I could eat enough tea and toast I might grow big enough to carry you, and my house would make a pretty good throne. Yes, perhaps I’ll carry you, if you will get me the tea and toast; for I must confess I should love to see the Emperor!”
As fast as her bare feet could carry her, Nikko ran home, took all the tea out of the canister, baked six batches of bread, put them in a bucket and carried them back to the forest. She then laid a fire of sticks and began to make toast so ambitiously that the scent of it could be smelled all over China from the Great Wall at one end to the Yellow Sea at the other. And above the fire hung the bucket, filled with water for the Snail’s tea.
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The Snail filled his acorn-cup a million times that day and ate toast till the sun went down. Then he rested for a few minutes, but when night came he began again and you could hear him munching in the dark.
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In the morning he was so big that he had to descend from the toadstool for fear of breaking its stem. By evening he was as big as a football, and by the next morning as big as the biggest snow-ball you ever made, and before the third day, he was big enough to carry Nikko on his back.
Meanwhile the Spider had been very busy. He had spun a wonderful silken gown, all decked with dew-drops and inwrought with the wings of butterflies, and when he had watched Nikko put it on and made sure that it fitted perfectly, he fastened himself in front for a brooch. Nikko was delighted. But suddenly she exclaimed:
“Alas, I have no shoes! The grand ladies all wear tiny beaded shoes. What shall I do with my feet?”
“Oh, never mind your feet,” replied the Snail. “You’ll be riding all the time so you can keep them tucked under your gown.”
So they picked the scarlet toadstool for a parasol, set Nikko a-top the Snail with her feet well hidden, and started on their way.
The procession was almost over; only a few stragglers hurried along the highroad, and they all overtook poor Nikko, for a Snail can go just half a mile an hour and no faster. A haughty four-in-hand of peacocks passed her at a strut, tails spread and crests erect; a team of pig-tailed Chinamen running for all they were worth and jolting their mistress till she was dizzy, almost stumbled headlong over the Snail; four turbaned slaves overtook her and then looked back open-mouthed at the beautiful lady; and a spotted leopard, loping in front of a gorgeous princess’ throne, shied in terror when the Snail happened to stick out his eyes, and the leopard, the throne and the gorgeous princess were wrecked in the muddy water of the rice-field beside the road.
When they came to the palace they heard the bells ringing, the big gongs sounding and the conches blowing, and saw great kites and paper lanterns and balloons swinging in the air, for the Emperor had just chosen a bride and the procession was all over! The bride was the beautiful lady Lu Tsing, who now sat beside him on the terrace and smiled down on all the other ladies. Her maidens and attendants sat at her feet and told her how fortunate she was.
“How did you feel when you rode in the procession?” asked one of the maidens.
“Weren’t you dreadfully excited till you knew whom his Majesty would choose?”
Lu Tsing yawned behind her fan.
“No,” she replied, “I wasn’t a bit excited, for I knew of course that he would choose me.”
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Just then the big Snail came plodding along the road, and they all got a glimpse of Nikko’s face under the scarlet parasol. She was so lovely to behold that everybody gasped. But the Emperor did more than gasp; he jumped up from his ivory chair and cried,
“Friends, Courtiers, Chinamen! I have changed my mind! I am not going to marry Lu Tsing after all, but this unknown damsel whose name has never been heard in the land!”
Then the bells were tolled and the gongs sounded and the conches blown louder than ever, as a hundred slaves hurried down the steps to pick up Nikko’s throne and carry her up to the terrace. Then the Snail withdrew into his house, for he was ticklish, and the Spider whispered to Nikko under cover of all the noise:
“You must not be found with a real spider on your breast! I will leave you now, and you can say you have lost your pin.”
With these words he dropped to the ground and ran when he thought no one would notice. But one person did notice; that was the lady Lu Tsing. She tried to kill him with her foot, but he escaped again and again, till suddenly she picked up a cup from the tea-table, turned it up-side down and trapped him under it.
The Emperor greeted Nikko with honeyed words, but the lady Lu Tsing having caught the Spider, retreated to the furthest, darkest chamber of the palace, where she tore up all the curtains and bed-spreads and bureau-scarfs in her wrath till the room looked like a rag-man’s house. Then she sat down among the wreckage and plotted revenge.
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Nikko would have been quite happy if she had not been so worried about her bare feet. Sooner or later they would be discovered and oh, what would the Emperor think of her then? Just now he took her hand and said to her:
“My dear, you must tell me what you would like for a wedding gift!” And Nikko almost cried out: “Shoes, your Majesty, shoes!” but she did not want to give herself away, so she replied,
“Well, I do not know which I would rather have, a bright brocaded shawl or a new pair of slippers!”
“You shall have both,” declared the Emperor, and ordered a maiden to fetch them. Nikko donned the shawl and slipped on the little shoes but they were so small that they hurt her feet dreadfully.
“Ah well,” she said to herself, biting back tears of pain. “I shall have to get used to some discomforts now that I am to be an Empress!”
She had been Empress for about a week, when her husband the Emperor fell very ill. It really was indigestion after the wedding-feast, but of course the doctors wanted to make it something more dignified, so they said:
“He must have been bitten by a poisonous insect!”
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“Yes, and I know who it was,” said Lu Tsing to her attendants. “It was the golden Spider who sat on Nikko’s breast when she came! Everybody thought it was a pin, but it really was a Spider, for I saw him creep away!” and the attendants went about the palace telling everybody how Nikko had worn a live Spider for a pin.
Nikko was very anxious about her husband. He lay on a couch in the parlor because he was too ill to sit on his throne, and twenty doctors stood around and told him that a poisonous insect must have bitten him. Just then Lu Tsing came in, with a tea-cup in her hand.
“Behold what the maid found in his Majesty’s bed when she turned the mattress!” she cried, And showed them the golden Spider, who sat in the tea-cup and looked at them with great surprise.
“Why, it is the Spider that Nikko wore when she came,” said the Emperor. “We all thought it was a pin. And she said she had lost it. Nikko, you were fibbing!”
“Yes, I was fibbing,” Nikko admitted.
“Friends, Courtiers, Chinamen! I have changed my mind”
“Friends, Courtiers, Chinamen! I have changed my mind”
“And then she put the Spider into your Majesty’s bed!” cried all the people. “She is a wicked woman!”
In vain Nikko protested. Lu Tsing’s attendants had told the story so often that everybody was ready to believe it now that they saw the Spider.
“The Spider shall be killed, and Nikko be put into the highest, strongest, darkest tower, with a moat around it, and kept there all her life,” said the Emperor in great anger, “and Lu Tsing shall be Empress of China!”
So they set the Spider down on the floor and called a hundred slaves to come with brooms and kill him. But the hundred slaves all hit each other’s brooms and got so mixed up that they did not hit the Spider at all, so he hid under the Emperor’s couch and when nobody was looking he ran away. He ran to the back-yard where the extra thrones and the Emperor’s beasts were kept.
Here the Snail was just having an argument with a quick-tempered Dragon about which was better, tea or toast. The Dragon said tea. The Snail said toast.
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“Stop arguing,” said the Spider. “The best food is rice anyway.” And while the Dragon was still switching his tail and shouting: “Tea, tea, tea!” the Snail stopped and listened to the story of Nikko’s trouble.
“This is awful,” he said, looking forward with one eye and back with the other to make sure nobody was listening. “Have they put Nikko in the tower?”
“Yes, they have,” wept the Spider.
“Can’t she let herself out of the window? You could creep in and spin a rope for her. She’s not very heavy.”
“But there is a deep moat around the tower,” said the Spider. “I couldn’t get to her, and besides if she let herself down she would drop into the moat.”
“I’ll help you below,” replied the Snail. “You be ready to do your part. Meet me to-night at the edge of the moat!”
Just then one of the slaves appeared with a broom, so the little spider ducked out of sight under a throne. The Snail sat in deep thought for a while; then he went and found the Dragon again, and told him that toast was better than tea.
At night, when the temple-bells had stopped ringing and everyone in the palace was fast asleep, the Snail and the Spider met at the edge of the moat.
“Hop on my back,” whispered the Snail, and slid into the water with the Spider aboard. Softly he floated across the black moat to the tower where Nikko was imprisoned.
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Poor Nikko sat weeping by the window. It was cold and dusty and untidy in the tower-room. She had pulled the brocaded shawl tight about her shoulders and had taken off her tiny shoes, for now that she was no longer an Empress she thought she might as well be comfortable. Her parasol lay up-side-down in a corner for she never expected to use it again. The sun never shone in the tower where she was to stay all her life.
How surprised she was when a small voice called: “Nikko, Empress of China!” and looking up, she discovered the golden spider sitting on the window-sill!
“We must hurry,” he said, and began to spin a rope. He was all out of breath from running up the high steep wall of the tower. When he had finished the rope, Nikko put on her shoes and picked up the parasol, the Spider hopped on her shoulder, and together they let themselves carefully out of the window. The rope was very slippery and they slid down a little faster than they intended.
Splash! they landed on the back of the Snail and ducked him completely under water, but he bobbed right up again. They floated across the moat in the moonlight and the spider climbed on top of the parasol and kept the watch, for the Snail kept getting his eyes full of water, and Nikko was so busy holding on that she could not look around at all.
“Take care,” said the Spider, “someone is coming! Thank goodness, here we are ashore. But I’m afraid somebody has seen us!”
The Snail crawled out of the water and shook himself, stretched his eyes and paused for breath.
“Run away, Nikko,” he said. “I should like to carry you, but my pace is too slow. You had better trust to your feet. Hurry, hurry and flee from the land of China, or the Emperor’s soldiers will catch you!”
“But I won’t leave you,” protested Nikko.
“Yes, you must leave me. I will follow by and by and meet you in the big world beyond China, for no one will think about me or try to catch me. Take the Spider with you. Buddha preserve you!”
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So Nikko and the Spider kissed him goodbye and ran away together, over muddy fields of rice and big dry fields of black poppies, past temples and villages till they came to the furthest end of the country. It was lucky they had not waited for the Snail, for no sooner were they out of sight of the palace than they heard the Emperor’s soldiers coming after them. Somebody really had seen them in the moat; it was the Dragon, who had drunk so much tea the day before that he could not sleep that night and was prowling through the yard looking for the Snail. He wanted to have another argument to pass the time. But when he discovered the Snail in the moat, carrying Nikko away from the tower, he did not stop to argue—he ran straight to the Emperor’s room, and told him what he had seen.
Nikko ran as fast as she could, ducking under the tea-plants whenever she had to stop and rest. She lost one shoe in the deep mud, so she took off the other one too and carried it in her hand, glad to be barefoot again. The tea-plants tore her gown, but every time there was a fresh rent the Spider promptly mended it.
Thus they came to the great Wall of China, and there they had to stop. The gates were locked and the wall was much, much too high to climb over.
“Ha, we have you now!” shouted the soldiers, catching up and swinging their swords most grandly.
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But just then there came a mighty puff of wind that pulled hard at Nikko’s parasol. She held on with all her might, and the wind picked her up and wafted her high, high into the air, and carried her clean over the wall! The soldiers dropped their swords in amazement, and stood with mouths agape, but there was nothing they could do for the gate was locked and Nikko escaped under their very noses. They could only pick up their swords and go home again, with their pig-tails dangling foolishly behind.
In a great forest outside the land of China, the parasol came to earth. Nikko planted it in the ground to let it grow as a toadstool once more. When it rained she sat underneath it, and by and by the Spider made curtains all around, so that she had a lovely little house to live in.
About three months later, when they had given up all hope of ever seeing the Snail again and the Spider had hung a black crepe on the door in his memory, they heard a rustle among the tea-plants, and saw his pearly shell plodding through the forest!
“Well,” said the Snail, sitting down heavily, “I’m sure I never want to go travelling again! The roads are really dreadful in China, and the baggage problem is terrible!” It had taken him two months to make the trip, and he had to wait another month for the great gate to be opened, for it is only opened once a year, and anyone who wants to come in or go out has to wait for that day.
But they were so happy to be reunited again that they soon forgot all their troubles. The Snail lived in his house and Nikko in hers, and the Spider had Nikko’s old shoe for a bungalow. Every afternoon Nikko received her friends on the little lawn between the three houses, where she spread the bright brocaded shawl and served them tea in the most imperial fashion. When it was time to go they would make a bow and say:
“Goodnight, Empress, Buddha preserve your Majesty!”
“But I am not an Empress any more!” said Nikko sadly. “Lu Tsing is Empress of China.”
“Oh well,” replied the Snail, “Lu Tsing may be Empress of China, but I’m sure you are Empress of everywhere else!”
“Where is that?” asked the Spider.
“Lazybones,” said the Snail with his great-auntliest air, “look it up on the map!”
So they continued to bow, and the Spider (who didn’t look it up) embroidered a little sampler with these words on it and fastened it over Nikko’s door:
“Here under curtains magnificent dwellsNikko, the Empress of Everywhere Else!”
“Here under curtains magnificent dwells
Nikko, the Empress of Everywhere Else!”
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Once upon a time there was a man who lived in a dark hut under a willow tree. His face, and his wife’s face, and the faces of their six black-haired children, were as dark and gnarled as the willow trunk. But when their seventh son was born, he was a light-haired boy, with clear blue eyes, and a smile like golden sunshine.
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“This is not our child!” cried the black-eyed man and the black-eyed woman; “this yellow-haired baby is a changeling; the dwarfs have put him into the cradle!” So they called him Peter Dwarf. They were very unkind to him, and when he grew older they made him do hard, ugly work, like picking nettles and killing lambs. Peter liked to work, but he did not at all like to kill poor little lambs.
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One day it happened that the cat got into the larder and ate a big piece of meat. The black-eyed woman took her by the tail and flung her out of the window at Peter Dwarf, telling him that he must get rid of her at once. But when he had the lovely white cat in his arms, she looked at him so pleadingly that tears came into his eyes, and he said: “Minka, I cannot hurt you! But if I don’t obey, my father and mother will be very angry.’” But the cat still looked at him so sorrowfully that he said: “Minka, let us both run away. You shall not be harmed.”
They walked over many fields where corn and beans grew in rows and the rabbits jumped away as they came. When night fell they had reached a mountain, and there were no more fields, only roots and rocks and shadowy trees.
“Let us go into a cave to sleep,” Peter Dwarf suggested. So they crept into a deep cavern, which seemed to have no end. Peter spread his coat and lay down; but Minka crept into all the dark crannies mewing and scratching, and finally she disappeared. When Peter heard her come back again, he could only see her eyes, shining like stars in the rocky passage.
“Oho!” he cried, and the cavern echoed, “does this vault go on into the mountain? I must see how far it goes.” So he took up his coat and followed Minka. Presently they were in the heart of the hill. The caves were cold and damp, and it was very dark. Then Peter, shuddering, turned around to go back, but he was entirely lost among the winding passages, and the white cat walked aimlessly from one cavern to another. At last, after much wandering, they saw a light, and at the same time they heard voices—little buzzing voices, that sounded like a copper dish when you strike it and set it ringing.
“They are coming this way!” whispered Peter Dwarf. “Look, they have lanterns—they will save us. But who are they?—Minka, they are the Diggerfolk—the Dwarfs!”
Presently they came, and their lanterns made shadowy circles on the walls. They were little men, in gay, patched clothes, and their faces were brown and wrinkled like walnuts. They stopped, raised their arms, and pointed at Peter, crying all together:
“Here is a mortal! Here is a child of mortals, in our own native caverns!”
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Now Peter had gone many hours without anything to eat, and the darkness and hunger had made him shaky. His knees gave way under him and he sank down on the stone.
“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.”
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“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!”
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“Work?” said the dwarf with the hammer, “how can such a slight and princely creature work? Peter, let me see your hands.” He felt Peter’s hands; they were thin and strong and callous. “Yes,” he said, “this boy knows what it is to work, I think we had better let him stay with us. And now, Peter, since you are coming with us, let us have a general introduction. My name is Stroke,” and he bowed as best he could over his round stomach. “I am a Swordsmith, and he with the pick-axe is a Miner, Mushroom by name; he of the pointed ears is Berry, the Blacksmith; and those three who are talking to the Lady Minka, are Hump, the Goldsmith, Crow the Coppersmith, and Wisely, he that jingles the keys—a Locksmith.”
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Peter got up and bowed to the little men. They told him to follow, then they led the way through winding passages down to the very center of the earth.
“Now, if you will truly learn the trades,” they said, “you must work with each one of us for a year. You shall be given plenty to eat, and shall sleep beside the fire.”
So Peter worked for the first year with Mushroom, the Miner. They would go into the shafts together and break the good ore out of the crags, letting the pieces roll with a noise like thunder down into the cave where Thorn, the Smelter, kept his furnace glowing.
The next year Peter worked for Thorn, the Smelter, and his face became a ruddy brown from standing over the roaring furnaces; then he learned from Berry, the Blacksmith, how to make hammers and axes and other tools; and the next year he helped Stroke to fashion swords and armor. He made gold chains and brooches and rings with Hump, and keys with Wisely, the Locksmith. Before the seventh year was over, there was not a lock in all Christendom which Peter could not open.
“Keys,” said Wisely, stroking his silken beard, “Keys are the most magic things in all the world. You have learned your trades well, Peter Dwarf; now we will let you go forth into the world and try your luck. And because you have been faithful and sweet-natured, you shall have a gift of magic. This gift shall be that whenever you stand in another person’s shoes, you will be able to see what that person sees and know what that person knows. Now use your magic as you will, and do not forget us. Good-bye, Peter Dwarf, good-bye!”
All the little dwarfs waved their caps and their big brown hands, as Peter and Minka went back to the sunny upper Earth, which they had not seen for seven years.
They wandered for a long time, when finally they came to the hut where Peter had been born, but strange people lived in it now—his wicked black-eyed family had all died; the woman of a cat-bite, the man of a dog-bite, and the six naughty boys of over-eating. So Peter and his white Pussy walked on for many miles and came to a splendid palace where a king lived with his queen.
“O Minka!” said Peter, quite breathlessly, “if one could only look inside for one single moment! Wouldn’t you love to look inside?”
“Mew-ew,” said the cat, rubbing her head against his bare ankles. “Mew!”
Just then a fat gentleman, in blue and gold attire, came running down the hillside, as fast as he could run. He stopped to catch his breath, and then started again. He was the king’s chamberlain. Peter bowed and spoke to him. “Sir, is there anything I can do for you? If it is an errand, I am a swift runner!”
“Indeed you should be swifter than I,” groaned the chamberlain. “Oh what a stitch I have; what a stitch! Yes, run if you will, and summon all the doctors in the land, and all the wise philosophers; for the King is very ill.”
So Peter ran, as fast as only a bare-foot boy can run; and soon he came to a house that bore a sign:
DR. FAUSTUS PH.D
He drummed on the door until the old magician came out, pipe in hand, to ask what had happened.
“The King is very ill!” cried Peter. “Go swiftly to the palace, good doctor, and find out what ails him.”
All afternoon Peter ran on and on, hunting up physicians and wise men and sending them to the palace. At night he returned to the palace and the blue-and-gold gentleman called him into the banquet hall. Peter’s heart beat high as he entered the shining room which was lit by a thousand candles. Timidly he stood in the doorway, his red pointed cap in his hands and the white cat at his heels.
He almost lost his breath when the Queen stepped through the great portal of gold. She was arrayed in crimson silk, with red roses in her black hair, and tiny silver slippers on her feet.
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“Who is the little ragamuffin hiding behind the Lord Chamberlain?” demanded the Queen, spying Peter Dwarf. “Send him here, I would speak with him!”
Peter approached, frightened and dazed, and dropped upon one knee.
“Your Majesty,” he replied to her questioning, “I am Peter Dwarf; the kind Lord Chamberlain has permitted me to enter the hall.”
“I like this boy,” said the Queen to the stout Lord Chamberlain. “Put him into proper clothes and send him back to me; he shall be my page.”
So they took Peter through many snow-white rooms to a little room in the back of the palace. In it were a bed and chairs made of rosewood, and roses painted on the walls, and silver stars on the ceiling; so that when you lay in bed you felt as though you were in a bower, looking up at the starry sky.
“Here is your room,” said the servant who had brought him in. “And these are the clothes you are to wear.”
Peter took off his leather apron and his red cap, and put on a doublet and hose of light blue silk, and a mantle of dark blue velvet. But happy as he was in his rich attire, he did not forget about the king who was so ill. Every time he met somebody who might know, he asked:
“Is his Majesty any better?”
“No,” was always the answer, “He is very ill.”
At last the kind Lord Chamberlain told Peter what the doctors had said.
“Some wicked enemy of the King,” he reported, “is burning a waxen image of his majesty over a slow fire; and as long as the image lasts the King will live, but when it has all melted he will die.”
“Who can it be?” cried Peter. “Does no one know?”
“Nobody knows except the wicked person himself. We think—but say not that I told you—we think it is someone in this very palace, for the good King has no enemies among his neighbors.”
Suddenly Peter remembered the magic power that the dwarfs had given him.
“Let me try on everybody’s shoes,” he cried, “and when I come to the shoes of the wicked person I shall know where the waxen image is melting!”
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The Lord Chamberlain gave him permission to creep into every bedroom and dressing room in the palace. Minka always went ahead, and when anyone was in the room she waved her tail to warn Peter away, but when the chamber was empty, she said, “Mew,” and then Peter went in and tried on all the shoes he could find. But all the knowledge that came to him was a lot of little foolish secrets—where the Lady Natalia kept her jewels, and the Lord Richard had ridden over a chicken and had not paid the poor farmer a penny for it, and that the little chambermaid Clarissa was in love with a beggar-man. But he could not find out where the waxen image was melting.
Meanwhile he hardly saw the Queen at all. She was always with the King, bathing his forehead, smoothing his pillow, and getting his chicken broth.
“See,” said the chamberlain and the doctors, “how much she loves him!”
One day the King was tired of having so many people about him, and sent everybody away but the Queen and Peter who had come in to fill the lamps. The Queen was stroking the poor King’s forehead. She had forgotten that Peter was in the room. As soon as he was asleep she doubled up her lovely white hand and shook her fist at him, whispering: “Melt—melt—melt! Another night and you are done!”
Peter thought his heart would stand still. Had he really heard aright? He crept out of the room as quietly as he had come, and hastened to the Queen’s dressing room. Never had it occurred to him to try onhershoes! He attempted to open the door; it was locked. So he turned sadly to his own room, and sat down to think it over.
Presently a valet came in with a message.
“You are to wait on the Queen at dinner tonight,” it read. Peter obeyed, and thought little more about it. But when the Queen was seated he stood behind her chair and he noticed that she slipped her silver shoe off under the table. Deftly he stepped out of his own, and while she was helping herself to pink ice cream, he tried to push his foot into her little shoe. But alas! the shoe was so small that he could not even get his toes into it! He tried and tried, but in vain; he had to give it up.
That night he walked disconsolately with Minka in the garden. They were just under the Queen’s window when suddenly, the casement was opened, and something which looked like a fiery rocket or a shooting star flew out into the air—over their heads.
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“A witch!” cried Peter, and then, “The Queen!” For at that very moment a silver slipper fell beside him in the grass. When he had stepped into it at dinner, trying to stand in it for just one moment, he had stretched it so much that now it was too big for the Queen.
As it fell Minka made a leap for it and tapped it with her paws—but no sooner was her little white foot inside the slipper then she began to wave her tail violently. She too had the magic gift of the Dwarfs!
“I believe you know,” cried Peter, as he followed her down the garden walks. “I believe you know where the waxen image is melting!” Peter took the slipper from Minka and she ran ahead swiftly and quietly, and led him over the fields and fences to a high, dark mountain. At the foot of the mountain stood a tower of granite, with great iron doors.
“Mew-ew,” said Minka, as she came up against the iron doors. “Mew!”
Peter tried to force the door but it was strongly locked and would not move. Then he peered through the key-hole, and saw a reddish light, like the glow of a great fire. A voice that sounded like the Queen’s was chanting a dismal verse and Peter knew from what she said that the image would be melted by dawn.
“Come,” said Peter to his cat, “I know what we must do; but it must be quick work! Oh Minka—one more dawn, and it will be too late!”
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He went into a cavern at the foot of the mountain. Here he called loudly down the dark passage way—“O Mushroom, Thorn, Stroke, Wisely! Help me—help me—help me!” And in another minute he saw little lights approaching from all parts of the mountain, as the faithful Diggerfolk came to his call.
Swiftly they set up a workshop, smelted the broken ore, hammered and polished and labored as only Dwarfs can. As the first streaks of light showed in the sky, they finished their work. Peter, who had taken off his silken clothes and put on a leather apron, now changed to the new suit of mail they had wrought and parted hastily from his friends with grateful thanks. Besides the armor, they had made him a sword, and most important of all a key to fit the iron doors. Soon he reached the tower again and putting the key into the lock he used all his strength and finally the great doors swung open.
Before him in the tower-chamber burned a mighty fire; the flames jumped up around something that seemed like a human figure, stretched directly above them—but if you looked twice you saw it was a statue of wax, rapidly melting away. Over it the Queen was murmuring incantations while she watched the figure grow smaller and smaller at every lick of the cruel flames.
Suddenly the white cat leaped at the Queen and began to scratch her. This gave Peter time to put out the fire and save the waxen image before it was quite melted.
A wonderful lady stood before him in the shining dawn
A wonderful lady stood before him in the shining dawn
“I’m coming, Minka, I’m coming!” he cried, as the Queen seized her by the throat and tried to choke her. Minka fought valiantly, until Peter rushed forward and cut off the Queen’s head with a single stroke of his sword. At that moment everything grew dark; a noise like thunder came from the depth of the mountain and Peter clasped his hands over his eyes, for he did not want to see any more.
When he looked up again, the sun had risen. Light flooded the room, and a wonderful lady, clad in white samite as soft and pure as Minka’s fur, stood before him in the shining dawn. She held out her hands, and shaking back her golden hair said:
“Peter Dwarf, my good sweet Peter, I am the Princess Minka; don’t you recognize me?” Then Peter looked into her starry eyes, and knew that his beloved Minka must have been enchanted by the wicked Queen many years ago, and that now the spell was broken.
So they returned swiftly to the royal palace, where they found everybody rejoicing because the King was so much better that that morning he had eaten four buckwheat cakes with syrup for his breakfast. And the King dubbed Peter a knight and made him general of his army and for a wedding present gave him a palace with a great rose-garden and a banquet hall. Soon after this Peter and Minka were married. When the good King died, many years later, they were made King and Queen, and ruled in peace and happiness all the rest of their days.
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