Laura Richards
Snow-White or, The House in the Wood

CHAPTER III.
THE MAN

The child's song broke off in a little scream, for things are sometimes startling even when you have been expecting them; but the scream bubbled into a laugh. "Ah! I – I mean I'm laughing because you look so funny. I took some bread and milk because I was hungry." She stopped abruptly, feeling that sob somewhere about her again. The dwarf advanced toward her, and she held on to the back of the chair; but he held out his hand and smiled.

"How do you do?" he said. "I am very glad to see you; pray sit down again and finish your supper."

"It's your supper," said the child, who was honest. "I didn't mean to steal it; I don't know p'r'aps there isn't enough for both of us." She had a way of leaving out words in her sentences that sometimes confused people, but the dwarf seemed to understand.

"There's plenty for both!" he said. "Come! I'll sit down here, and you shall give me some milk. I am hungry, too. Have some honey!" He nodded at her, and smiled again; he had the most delightful smile the child had ever seen. Somebody once said you could warm yourself at it as at a fire. The child took a piece of bread, and looked at him over it as she nibbled. He was not a tiny dwarf, not one of the kind that get into flowers, and fight with grass-blades, and that sort of thing. No, indeed! he was just a little man; why, he was taller than she was, though not so very much taller. He had brown hair and a soft brown beard; his eyes were brown, too, and full of light. All brown and gray, for his dress was gray and soft, "kind of humplety velvet," the child said to herself, though it was really only corduroy. He seemed all of a piece with the house, and the gray rock behind it. Now he looked at her, and smiled again.

"You look as if you were wondering something very much," he said. "Have some more milk! What are you wondering?"

"Partly I was wondering where the rest of you was!" said the child.

"The rest of me?" said the man. "There isn't any more of me. This is all there is. Don't you think it's enough?" He smiled still, but this time it was only his mouth, and his eyes looked dark, as if something hurt him.

"I mean the others," the child explained. "The rest of the seven. I guess it's six, p'r'aps. There was seven of 'em where Snow-white came to, you know."

"Seven what?" asked the man.

"Dwarfs!" said the child.

"Oh!" said the man.

He was silent for a moment, as if he were thinking; then he laughed, and the child laughed, too. "Isn't it funny?" she said. "What are you laughing at?"

"Yes, it is funny!" said the man. "Why, you are just like Snow-white, aren't you? but there aren't any more dwarfs. I'm the only one there is here."

The child thought that was a pity. "You could have much more fun if there were seven of you," she said. "Why don't you get some more?" Then suddenly recollecting herself, she added, hastily, "I never did cook, but I can stir porridge, and dust I can, too, and I 'spect I could make your bed, 'cause it wouldn't be so big, you see. I tried to make beds, but I get all mixed up in the sheets, and the blankets are horrid, and I never know which is the wrong side of the spread. So you see!"

"I see!" said the man.

"But I 'spect I could make yours, don't you? Should you mind if once I didn't get the spread right, you know?"

"Not a bit. Besides, I don't like spreads. We'll throw it away."

"Oh, let's!" said the child. "Hurrah! Do you say hurrah?"

"Hurrah!" said the man. "Do you mind if I smoke a pipe?"

No, the child did not mind at all. So he brought a most beautiful pipe, and filled and lighted it; then he sat down, and looked at the child thoughtfully.

"I suppose you ought to tell me where you came from," he said. "It isn't half so much fun, but I suppose they will be missing you at home, don't you? Your mamma – "

The child hastened to explain. Her mamma was away, had gone quite away with her papa, and left her, the child, alone with Miss Tyler and the nurse. Now Miss Tyler was no kinds of a person to leave a child wiz; she poked and she fussed, and she said it was shocking whenever you did anything, but just anything at all except sit still and learn hymns. "I hate hymns!" said the child.

"So do I!" said the man, fervently. "It's a pity about Miss Tyler. Where is it you came from, Snow-white?"

"Oh! it's somewhere else; a long way off. I can't go back there. Dwarfs never send people back there; they let them stay and do the work. And I'm almost as big as you are!" the child ended, with a little quaver.

"So you are," said the man. "Now we'll wash the dishes, and forget all about it for to-night, anyhow."

It was glorious fun washing the dishes, such pretty dishes, blue and white, with houses and birds on them. They went into the kitchen through one of the doors, and there all the things were bright and shining, as if they were made of silver. The child asked the dwarf if they were really silver, but he said oh, dear, no, only Britannia. That sounded like nonsense, because the child knew that Britannia ruled the waves, her papa sang a song about it; but she thought perhaps dwarfs didn't understand about that, so she said nothing. The dwarf brought a little cricket, and she stood on that and wiped the dishes while he washed them; and he said he never liked washing them so much before, and she said she never liked wiping them so much. Everything was as handy as possible. The dish-pan was as bright as the rest of the things, and there were plenty of clean towels, and when you shook the soap-shaker about, it made the most charming bubbles in the clean hot water.

"Do you ever make bubbles in your pipe?" said the child.

"Not in this one," said the dwarf. "I used to have a pipe for them; perhaps I can find one for you by and by."

"I made bubbles in the river," she announced, polishing a glass vigorously. "There was a stone, and I sat on it, and bubbles I made wiz kicks, you know, in the water; and songs I made, too, and the river went bubble, too, all the time. There was a frog, too, and he came and said things to me, but I kicked at him. He wasn't the Frog Prince, 'cause he had no gold spots on him. Do you know the Frog Prince? Does he live here in this river? Do you have gold balls when you play ball?"

"I'll get one," said the dwarf, recklessly. "It's no fun playing ball alone, but now we'll have one, I shouldn't wonder. How far did you come along the river, Snow-white?"

"Miles!" said Snow-white.

"And didn't you have shoes and stockings when you started?"

Yes, the child had had shoes and stockings, but she took them off to see her toes make dust-toes in the dust. Did ever the dwarf do that? It was fun! She left them away back there, miles away, before she came to the river and the woods. And her hat —

She laughed suddenly. "Did ever you put flowers in your hat and send it sailing for a boat?"

"Is that what you did, Snow-white?"

"Yes! and it was fun. It went bob, bob, right along wiz the water and bubbles; and then it tipped against a stone, and then it went round the corner, and – and that's all I know," she ended, suddenly.

"You are sleepy, Snow-white," said the dwarf. "See! the dishes are all done; now we will put them away in the cupboard, and then we will see about putting you away to bed."

The child objected that it was still daylight; she tried to look wide awake, and succeeded for a few minutes, while they were putting away the dishes in the most charming little hanging cupboard with glass doors; but after that her head grew heavy, and her eyelids, as she expressed it, kept flopping into her eyes.

"Where am I going to sleep?" she asked. "There ought to be little white beds, you know, and one would be too big, and the next would be too small, and – no, that's the Three Bears, isn't it? I don't see any beds at all in this place." She began to rub her eyes, and it was clear that there must be no further delay.

"Come in here," said the man. "Here is your bed, all ready for you."

He led her through the other door, and there was a tiny bedroom, all shining and clean, like the other rooms. The bed stood in one corner, white and smooth, with a plumpy pillow that seemed to be waiting for the child. She sighed, a long sigh of contented weariness, and put up her arms in a fashion which the man seemed to understand. He sat down in a low chair and took her in his arms, where she nestled like a sleepy kitten. He rocked her gently, patting her in an absent fashion; but presently she raised her eyes with an indignant gleam. "You aren't singing anything!" she said. "Sing!"

"Hush!" said the man. "How can I sing unless you are quiet?"

He hummed under his breath, as if trying to recall something; then he laughed, in a helpless sort of way, and said to the door, "Look at this, will you?" but there was really nothing to look at; and after awhile he began to sing, in a soft, crooning voice, about birds, and flowers, and children, all going to sleep: such a drowsy song, the words seemed to nod along the music till they nodded themselves sound asleep.

When he finished, the child seemed to be asleep too; but she roused herself once more. She sat up on his knee and rubbed her eyes.

"Does dwarfs know about prayers?" she said, drowsily. "Do you know about them?"

The man's eyes looked dark again. "Not much," he said; "but I know enough to hear yours, Snow-white. Will you say it on my knee here?"

But the child slipped down to the floor, and dropped her head on his knee in a business-like way.

 
"'Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.'
 

"I don't say the rest, 'cause I don't like it. And God bless papa and mamma, and make me a goo' – l' – girl – amen. And God bless this dwarf," she added. "That's all." Then she lifted her head, and looked at the dwarf; and something in her look, flushed as she was with sleep, the light in her eyes half veiled, made the man start and flinch, and turn very pale.

"No!" he said, putting out his hands as if to push the child away. "No; leave me alone!"

The child opened her eyes a little wider, and looked at him. "What is the matter of you, dwarf?" she said. "I wasn't touching you. Are you cross?"

"No," said the man; and he smiled again. "Snow-white, if I don't put you to bed, you'll be going to sleep on my best floor, and I can't have that."

He laid her in the little bed, and tucked the bed-clothes round her smoothly; she was asleep almost before her head touched the pillow. The man stood looking at her a long time. Presently he took up one of her curls and examined it, holding it up to the fading light. It was a pretty curl, fine and soft, and of a peculiar shade of reddish brown. He went to a box and took out a folded paper. Unfolding this, took out another curl of hair, and laid it beside the child's; they might have grown on the same head.

"Though I take the wings of the morning – " said the man. Then he laid the curl back in the box, and went out and shut the door softly behind him.

CHAPTER IV.
ASKING QUESTIONS

"How many birds have you got, dwarf?" asked the child.

They were sitting at breakfast the next morning. To look at the child, no one would have thought she had ever been sleepy in her life; she was twinkling all over with eagerness and curiosity.

"How many?" repeated the man, absently. He hardly seemed to hear what the child said; he looked searchingly at her, and seemed to be trying to make out something that was puzzling him.

"Yes, how many?" repeated the child, with some asperity. "Seems to me you are rather stupid this morning, dwarf; but perhaps you are like bats, and sleep in the daytime. Are you like bats? Are dwarfs like bats? Can you hang up by your heels in trees? Have you got claws on them?"

Her eyes dilated with awful joy; but the man shook his head and laughed. "No, no, Snow-white. I wasn't sleepy at all; I was only thinking."

"Did you sleep last night?" asked the child, slightly disappointed. "I was in your bed, so you couldn't sleep. If you did sleep, where did you? Please give me some more bread. I don't see where you get bread; and I don't see where you slept; and you didn't tell me how many birds you had. I shall be angry pretty soon, I don't wonder."

"Snow-white," said the dwarf, "if you talk so fast, your tongue will be worn out before you are seventy."

"What is seventy?" said the child. "I hate it, anyway, and I won't be it."

"Hurrah!" said the man, "I hate it, too, and I won't be it, either. But as to the birds; how many should you think there were? Have you seen any of them?"

"I've seen lots and lots!" said the child, "and I've heard all the rest. When I woke up, they were singing and singing, as if they were seeing who could most. One of them came in the window, and he sat on my toe, and he was yellow. Then I said, 'Boo!' and then he flew away just as hard as he could fly. Do you have that bird?"

"Yes," said the man. "That is my Cousin Goldfinch. I'm sorry you frightened him away, Snow-white. If you had kept quiet, he would have sung you a pretty song. He isn't used to having people say 'Boo!' to him. He comes in every morning to see me, and sing me his best song."

"Are they all your birds?" queried the child. "Aren't you ever going to tell me how many you have? I don't think you are very polite. Miss Tyler says it's horrid rude not to answer questions."

"Miss Tyler is not here!" said the man, gravely. "I thought you said we were not to talk about her."

"So I did!" cried the child. "I say hurrah she isn't here, dwarf. Do you say it, too?"

"Hurrah!" said the man, fervently. "Now come, Snow-white, and I'll show you how many birds I have."

"Before we wash the dishes? Isn't that horrid?"

"No, not at all horrid. Wait, and you'll see."

The man crumbled a piece of bread in his hand, and went out on the green before the house, bidding the child stay where she was and watch from the window. Watching, the child saw him scatter the crumbs on the shining sward, and heard him cry in a curious kind of soft whistle:

"Coo! coo! coo!"

Immediately there was a great rustling all about; in the living green of the roof, in the yellow birches, but most of all in the vast depths of the buttonwood tree. In another moment the birds appeared, clouds and clouds of them, flying so close that their wings brushed each other; circling round and round the man, as he stood motionless under the great tree; then settling softly down, on his head, on his shoulders, on his outstretched arms, on the ground at his feet. He broke another piece from the loaf, and crumbled it, scattering the crumbs lavishly. The little creatures took their morning feast eagerly, gratefully; they threw back their tiny heads and chirped their thanks; they hopped and ran and fluttered about the sunny green space, till the whole seemed alive with swift, happy motion. Standing still among them, the man talked to them gently, and they seemed to understand. Now and then he took one in his hand and caressed it, with fingers as light as their own fluffy wings; and when he did that, the bird would throw back its head and sing; and the others would chime in, till the whole place rang with the music of them. It was a very wonderful thing, if any one had been there who understood about wonderful things; but to the child it seemed wholly natural, being like many other matters in the Fairy Books; only she wished she could do it, too, and determined she would, as soon as she learned a little more about the ways of dwarfs.

By and by, when he had fed and caressed and talked to them, the man raised his arm; and the gray fluttering cloud rose in the air with merry cries, and vanished in the leafy gloom. The child was at the door in a moment. "How do you do that?" she asked, eagerly. "Who telled you that? Why can't I do it, too? What is their names of all those birds? Why don't you answer things when I say them at you?"

"Snow-white," said the man, "I haven't yet answered the questions you asked me last night, and I haven't even begun on this morning's batch."

"But you will answer them all?" cried the child.

"Yes, I will answer them all, if you give me time."

"'Cause I have to know, you know!" said the child, with a sigh of relief.

"Yes, you have to know. But first I must ask you some questions, Snow-white. Come and sit down here on the roots of the birch; see, it makes an arm-chair just big enough for you."

The child came slowly, and seated herself as she was bid. But, though the seat was easy as a cradle, her brow was clouded.

"I don't like to answer things," she announced. "Only I like to ask them."

"But we must play fair," said the man. "It wouldn't be fair for you to have all the fun."

"No more it would. Well, I'll answer a fewly, dwarf; not many I won't, 'cause when you're little you don't have to know things first; only you have to find out about them."

"Snow-white, why did you run away from home?"

"Last night I told you that, dwarf. I made a song, too. I'll sing it for you."

She sat up, folded her hands, shut her eyes tight, and sang at the top of her voice:

 
"And I comed away,
And I runned away,
And I said I thought I did not
Want to stay;
And they tore their hair,
And they made despair.
And I said I thought perhaps
I did not care."
 

"Do you like that song?" she said, opening her eyes wide at the man.

Yes, the man liked it very much, but she was not answering his question.

"I sang it that way because that way Miss Tyler sings. She shuts her eyes and opens her mouth, and screeches horrid; but I don't screech, I truly sing. Don't I truly sing? Don't you think I was a bird if you didn't see me? don't you, dwarf?"

The dwarf said he was not going to answer any more questions. The child fidgetted on her seat, sighed, said he was stupid, and finally resigned herself.

"I told you that last night!" she said again. "My mamma went to New York, and my papa, too. They leaved me alone after I told them not to. And I told them; I said if they did, then I would; and they would, and so I did. And so you see!"

She looked up suddenly at the man, and once more he winced and drew in his breath.

"What's the matter?" asked the child, with quick sympathy. "Have you got a pain? is it here? is it in your front? often I have them in my front. You take a tablet, and then you curl up wiz the hot-water bottle, and perhaps it goes away pretty soon. Green apples makes it!" she nodded wisely. "Dwarfs didn't ought to eat them, any more than children. Where is the tree?"

The man did not answer this time. He seemed to be trying to pull up a weight that lay on him, or in him and sat moodily looking on the ground. At last —

"What is your mother's name?" he said; and then one saw that he had got the weight up.

"Evelyn!" said the child.

"Yes, of course!" said the man.

"What makes you say that?" asked the child. "Did ever you see her?"

"Did ever you see a toad with three tails?" said the man.

"Aren't you funny? say, is all dwarfs funny? aren't there really any more of you? didn't there ever was? where did the rest of them go? why do you stay in this place alone? I want to know all those things." She settled herself comfortably, and looked at the man confidently. But he seemed still to be labouring with something.

"Would your mother – would she be very unhappy, if she should come home and find you gone, Snow-white?"

The child opened her eyes at him.

"Oh, I s'pose she'd go crazy distracted; but she isn't coming home, not a long time isn't she coming home; that's why I comed away, and I runned away, and I said – what makes you look like that, dwarf?"

"I suppose I ought to send you home, Snow-white. I suppose you ought to go this very day, don't you?"

He stopped abruptly, for the signs were ominous; the child's lower lip was going up in the middle and coming down at the corners; her eyes were growing wider and wider, rounder and rounder; now they began to glitter.

"Don't cry!" said the man, hastily. "Don't cry, Snow-white. The other Snow-white never cried, you know."

The child sniffed tearfully. "The other Snow-white never was treated so!" she said. "Never those dwarfs tried to send her away, never. She cooked their dinner, and she swept, and they liked her, and they never said noffin, and – I haven't any hanky!" she concluded suddenly, after a vain search in her pink calico pocket.

The man handed her a great square of white cobweb linen, and she dried her eyes. "Never I heard of dwarfs sending children away!" she said, in conclusion. "I don't believe p'r'aps you aren't the right kind. Is you got any name? Not ever dwarfs has names."

"I'm afraid I have a kind of name!" the man admitted. "But it isn't much of one. You might call me Mark, though, if you like."

"That isn't no name at all. It's just you do it wiz a pencil. Aren't you funny? Truly is it your name? What made you have such a name?"

But the man declared he had lost his way in the questions. "I haven't begun on this morning's yet," he protested, "and now you are asking me to-morrow's, Snow-white. But we must do the dishes now, and then I'll show you where I slept last night. You asked me that the very first thing this morning, and you have not been still long enough yet for me to tell you."

That would be great! the child thought. On the whole, she thought perhaps he was the right kind of dwarf, after all. Why did he have a hump on his back, though? not in the Snow-white picture they did. Wasn't it funny, when she stood on the cricket she was just as tall as he? Wasn't that nice? wasn't he glad he wasn't any taller? didn't he think he was made that way just for little girls? did ever he see any little girls before? did he think she looked like Snow-white? why didn't he talk when she spoke to him?

It was a merry time, the dish-washing. The man had put away whatever it was that kept his eyes dark, and was smiling again, and chatting cheerfully. It appeared that he was an extraordinary person, after all, and quite like the books. He lived here all alone. Yes, always alone. No; he never had wanted any one else till now, but then he didn't know there were any Snow-whites; that made a great difference, you see.