Snow-White or, The House in the Wood

It appeared that the child wanted to buy candy, and a pony, and a watch, and a doll with wink-eyes and hair down to her feet, and a real stove, and a popgun, and – what was this place?

The wood broke open suddenly, and there was a bit of pasture-land, with rocks scattered about, and a little round blue pond, and by the pond a brown cow grazing. At the sound of voices the cow raised her head, and seeing the dwarf, lowed gently and began to move leisurely toward him.

The child clapped her hands and danced. "Is she saying 'hurrah'?" she cried. "Does she love you? do you love her? is she" – her voice dropped suddenly – "is she real, Mark?"

"Real, Snow-white? Why, see her walk! Did you think I wound her up? She's too big; and besides, I haven't been near her."

The child brushed these remarks aside with a wave. "Does she stay all the time a cow?" she whispered, putting her mouth close to the dwarf's ear. "Or does she turn at night into a princess?" She drew back and pointed a stern finger at him. "Tell me the troof, Mark!"

The dwarf was very humble. So far as he knew, he said, she was a real cow. She mooed like one, and she acted like one; moreover, he had bought her for one. "But you see," he added, "I don't stay here at night, so how can I tell?"

They both looked at the cow, who returned the stare with unaffected interest, but with no appearance of any hidden meaning in her calm brown gaze.

"I think," said the child, after a long, searching inspection, "I think – she's – only just a cow!"

"I think so, too," said the dwarf, in a tone of relief. "I'm glad, aren't you, Snow-white? I think it would be awkward to have a princess. Now I'll milk her, and you can frisk about and pick flowers."

The child frisked merrily for a time. She found a place where there were some brownish common-looking leaves; and stepping on them just to hear them crackle, there was a pink flush along the ground, and lo! a wonder of mayflowers. They lay with their rosy cheeks close against the moss, and seemed to laugh out at the child; and she laughed, too, and danced for joy, and put some of them in her hair. Then she picked more, and made a posy, and ran to stick it in the dwarf's coat. He looked lovely, she told him, with the pink flowers in his gray coat; she said she didn't care much if he never turned into anything; he was nice enough the way he was; and the dwarf said it was just as well, and he was glad to hear it.

"And you look so nice when you smile in your eyes like that, Mark! I think I'll kiss you now."

"I never kiss ladies when I am milking," said the dwarf. And then the child said he was a horrid old thing, and she wouldn't now, anyhow, and perhaps she wouldn't at all ever in her life, and anyhow not till she went to bed.

By and by she found a place where the ground was wet, near the edge of the pond, and she could go pat, pat with her feet, and make smooth, deep prints. This grew more and more pleasant the farther she went, till presently the water came lapping cool and clear over her feet. Yes, but just then a butterfly came, a bright yellow one, and she tried to catch it, and in trying tripped and fell her length in the pond. That was sad, indeed; and it was fortunate the milking was ended just at that time, for at first she meant to cry hard, and the only thing that stopped her was riding home on the dwarf's hump, dripping water all over his gray velvet clothes. He didn't care, he said, so long as she did not drip into the milk.

CHAPTER VII.

THE STORY

"I aspect, Mark," said the child, – "do you like better I call you Mark all the time than dwarf? then I will. I do really aspect you'll have to get me a clean dress to put on."

She held up her frock, and the dwarf looked at it anxiously. It was certainly very dirty. The front was entirely covered with mud, and matters had not been improved by her scrubbing it with leaves that she pulled off the trees as they came along.

"Dear me, Snow-white!" said the dwarf. "That is pretty bad, isn't it?"

"Yes," said the child; "it is too bad! You'll have to get me another. What kind will you get?"

"Well," said the dwarf, slowly; "you see – I hardly – wait a minute, Snow-white."

He went into the house, and the child waited cheerfully, sitting in the root-seat. Of course he would find a dress; he had all the other things, and most prob'ly likely there was a box that had dresses and things in it. She hoped it would be blue, because she was tired of this pink one. There might be a hat, too; when you had that kind of box, it was just as easy to have everything as only something; a pink velvet hat with white feathers, like the lady in the circus. The child sighed comfortably, and folded her hands, and watched the robins pulling up worms on the green.

But the dwarf went into the bedroom, and began pulling out drawers and opening chests with a perplexed air. Piles of handkerchiefs, socks, underwear, all of the finest and best; gray suits like the one he had on – but never a sign of a blue dress. He took down a dressing-gown from a peg, and looked it over anxiously; it was of brown velvet, soft and comfortable-looking, but it had evidently been lived in a good deal, and it smelt of smoke; no, that would never do. He hung it up again, and looked about him helplessly.

Suddenly his brow cleared, and his eyes darkened. He laughed; not his usual melodious chuckle, but the short harsh note that the child compared to a bark.

"Why not?" he said. "It's all in the family!"

He opened a deep carved chest that stood in a corner; the smell that came from it was sweet and old, and seemed to belong to far countries. He hunted in the corners, and presently brought out a folded paper, soft and foreign looking. This he opened, and took out, and shook out, a shawl or scarf of Eastern silk, pale blue, covered with butterflies and birds in bright embroidery. He looked at it grimly for a moment; then he shut the chest, for the child was calling, "Mark! where are you?" and hastened out.

"Never I thought you were coming," said the child. "See at that robin, Mark. He ate all a worm five times as longer as him, and now he's trying to get away that other one's. I told him he mustn't, and he will. Isn't he a greedy?"

"He's the greediest robin on the place," said the dwarf. "I mean to put him on allowance some day. See here, Snow-white, I'm awfully sorry, but I can't find a dress for you."

The child opened great eyes at him. "Can't find one, Mark? Has you looked?"

"Yes, I have looked everywhere, but there really doesn't seem to be one, you know; so I thought, perhaps – "

"But not in all the boxes you've looked, Mark!" cried the child. "Why, you got everything, don't you 'member you did, for dinner?"

Yes; but that was different, the dwarf said. Dresses didn't come in china pots, nor in tin cans either. No, he didn't think it would be of any use to stamp his foot and say to bring a blue dress this minute. But, look here, wouldn't this do? Couldn't she wrap herself up in this, while he washed her dress?

He held up the gay thing, and at sight of it the child clasped her hands together and then flung them out, with a gesture that made him wince. But it was the most beautiful thing in the world, the child said. But it was better than dresses, ever and ever so much better, because there were no buttons. And she might dress up in it? That would be fun! Like the pictures she would be, in the Japanesy Book at home. Did ever he see the Japanesy book? But it was on the big table in the long parlour, and he could see it any time he went in, but any time, if his hands were clean. Always he had to show his hands, to make sure they were clean. And she would be like the pictures, and he was a very nice dwarf, and she loved him.

In a wonderfully short time the child was enveloped in the blue silk shawl, and sitting on the kitchen-table cross-legged like a small idol, watching the dwarf while he washed the dress. He was handy enough at the washing, and before long the pink frock was moderately clean (some of the stains would not come out, and could hardly be blamed for it), and was flapping in the wind on a low-hanging branch. Now, the child said to the dwarf, was the time for him to tell her a story. What story? Oh, a story about a dwarf, any of the dwarfs he used to know, only except the Yellow Dwarf, or the seven ones in the wood, or the one in "Snow-white and Rosy Red," because she knowed those herself.

The dwarf smiled, and then frowned; then he lighted his pipe and smoked for a time in silence, while the child waited with expectant eyes; then, after about a week, she thought, he began.

"Once upon a time – "

The child nodded, and drew a long breath of relief. She had not been sure that he would know the right way to tell a story, but he did, and it was all right.

"Once upon a time, Snow-white, there was a man – "

"Not a man! a dwarf!" cried the child.

"You are right!" said Mark Ellery. "I made a mistake, Snow-white. Not a man, – a dwarf! I'll begin again, if you like. Once upon a time there was a dwarf."

"That's right!" said the child. She drew the blue shawl around her, and sighed with pleasure. "Go on, Mark."

"The trouble is," he went on, "he – this dwarf – was born a man-thing, a man-child; it was not till his nurse dropped him that it was settled that he was to be a dwarf-thing, and never a man. That was unfortunate, you see, for he had some things born with him that a dwarf has no business with. What things? Oh, nothing much; a heart, and brains, and feelings; that kind of thing."

"Feelings? If you pinched him did it hurt, just like a man?"

"Just; you would have thought he was a man sometimes, if you had not seen him. The trouble was, his mother let him grow up thinking he was a man. She loved him very much, you see, and – she was a foolish woman. She taught him to think that the inside of a man was what mattered; and that if that were all right, – if he were clean and kind and right-minded, and perhaps neither a fool nor a coward, – people would not mind about the outside. He grew up thinking that."

"Was he quite stupid?" the child asked. "He must have been, I think, Mark."

"Yes, he was very stupid, Snow-white."

"Because he might have looked in the glass, you know."

"Of course he might; he did now and then. But he thought that other women, other people, were like his mother, you see; and they weren't, that was all.

"He was very rich, this dwarf – "

The child's eyes brightened. The story had been rather stupid so far, but now things were going to begin.

Did he live in a gold house? she asked. Did he have chariots and crowns and treasure, bags and bags of treasure? was there a Princess in it? when was he going to tell her about her? why didn't he go on?