“Fair prince,” she cried mockingly, “may you conquer as many kingdoms as I have lost. I was the queen of the Island of Pearls and the Mountains of Gold; each day my table was served with fourteen different kinds of fish, and a negro page bore my train.” “And by what misfortune have you lost your islands and your mountains, good woman?” asked the Duchess. “I vexed the dwarfs, and they carried me far away from my dominions.” “Are the dwarfs so powerful?” George asked. “As they live in the earth,” the old woman answered, “they know the virtue of precious stones, they work in metals, and they unseal the hidden sources of the springs.” “And what did you do to vex them?” asked the Duchess. “On a December night,” said the old woman, “one of them came to ask permission to prepare a great midnight banquet in the kitchen of the castle, which, vaster than a chapter-house, was furnished with casseroles, frying-pans, earthen saucepans, kettles, pans, portable-ovens, gridirons, boilers, dripping-pans, dutch-ovens, fish-kettles, copper-pans, pastry-moulds, copper-jugs, goblets of gold and silver, and mottled wood, not to mention iron roasting-jacks, artistically forged, and the huge black cauldron which hung from the pothook. He promised neither to disturb nor to damage anything. I refused his request, and he disappeared muttering vague threats. The third night, it being Christmas, this same dwarf returned to the chamber where I slept. He was accompanied by innumerable others, who pulled me out of bed and carried me to an unknown land in my nightgown. ‘Such,’ they said as they left me, ‘such is the punishment of the rich who refuse even a part of their treasure to the industrious and kindly dwarf folk who work in gold and cause the springs to flow.’” Thus said the toothless old woman, and the Duchess having comforted her with words and money, she and the two children retraced their way to the castle. VI Which tells of what can be seen from the Keep of Clarides It was one day shortly after this that Honey-Bee and George, without being observed, climbed the steps of the watch-tower which stands in the middle of the Castle of Clarides. Having reached the platform they shouted at the top of their voices and clapped their hands. Their view extended down the hillside divided into brown and green squares of cultivated fields. Woods and mountains lay dimly blue against the distant horizon. “Little sister,” cried George, “little sister, look at the whole wide world!” “The world is very big,” said Honey-Bee. “My teachers,” said George, “have taught me that it is very big; but, as Gertrude our housekeeper says, one must see to believe.” They went the round of the platform. “Here is something wonderful, little brother,” cried Honey-Bee. “The castle stands in the middle of the earth and we are on the watch-tower in the middle of the castle, and so we are standing in the middle of the earth. Ha! ha! ha!”