and at the behaviour of the birds. 'It only shows,' they said,
'what a vulgarising effect this incessant rushing and flying about
has. Well-bred people always stay exactly in the same place, as we
do. No one ever saw us hopping up and down the walks, or galloping
madly through the grass after dragon-flies. When we do want change
of air, we send for the gardener, and he carries us to another bed.
This is dignified, and as it should be. But birds and lizards have
no sense of repose, and indeed birds have not even a permanent
address. They are mere vagrants like the gipsies, and should be
treated in exactly the same manner.' So they put their noses in
the air, and looked very haughty, and were quite delighted when
after some time they saw the little Dwarf scramble up from the
grass, and make his way across the terrace to the palace.
'He should certainly be kept indoors for the rest of his natural
life,' they said. 'Look at his hunched back, and his crooked
legs,' and they began to titter.
But the little Dwarf knew nothing of all this. He liked the birds
and the lizards immensely, and thought that the flowers were the
most marvellous things in the whole world, except of course the
Infanta, but then she had given him the beautiful white rose, and
she loved him, and that made a great difference. How he wished
that he had gone back with her! She would have put him on her
right hand, and smiled at him, and he would have never left her
side, but would have made her his playmate, and taught her all
kinds of delightful tricks. For though he had never been in a
palace before, he knew a great many wonderful things. He could
make little cages out of rushes for the grasshoppers to sing in,
and fashion the long jointed bamboo into the pipe that Pan loves to
hear. He knew the cry of every bird, and could call the starlings
from the tree-top, or the heron from the mere. He knew the trail
of every animal, and could track the hare by its delicate
footprints, and the boar by the trampled leaves. All the wild-
dances he knew, the mad dance in red raiment with the autumn, the
light dance in blue sandals over the corn, the dance with white
snow-wreaths in winter, and the blossom-dance through the orchards
in spring. He knew where the wood-pigeons built their nests, and
once when a fowler had snared the parent birds, he had brought up
the young ones himself, and had built a little dovecot for them in
the cleft of a pollard elm. They were quite tame, and used to feed
out of his hands every morning. She would like them, and the
rabbits that scurried about in the long fern, and the jays with
their steely feathers and black bills, and the hedgehogs that could
curl themselves up into prickly balls, and the great wise tortoises
that crawled slowly about, shaking their heads and nibbling at the
young leaves. Yes, she must certainly come to the forest and play
with him. He would give her his own little bed, and would watch
outside the window till dawn, to see that the wild horned cattle
did not harm her, nor the gaunt wolves creep too near the hut. And
at dawn he would tap at the shutters and wake her, and they would
go out and dance together all the day long. It was really not a
bit lonely in the forest. Sometimes a Bishop rode through on his
white mule, reading out of a painted book. Sometimes in their
green velvet caps, and their jerkins of tanned deerskin, the
falconers passed by, with hooded hawks on their wrists. At
vintage-time came the grape-treaders, with purple hands and feet,