“You must go alone at midnight to the hill where the Kobold dwells, and summon him forth by saying these magic words:-- “_Green hill, green hill, open to me._ _I would the wise old Kobold see._” “Well, if that isn’t conceited!” said the Pixie scornfully. “Of all the nonsense! ‘The wise old Kobold’! My word!” “When the Kobold comes out, you must tell him that you have come to rescue the Beauteous Maiden and inquire his terms. He will ask you to perform a task for him, and when it is completed, I shall be free.” “I know just what he’ll ask you, too,” put in the Pixie. “Same superannuated stuff! He’ll ask you to guess his name.” “Well, what is his name?” asked Wendell, looking from the Pixie to the Beauteous Maiden and back again. “How should I know?” shrugged the Pixie. “He doesn’t know, himself, really. He stuck to Rumpelstiltskin a few hundred years, but lately he changes it every time. He has to, you know, because he always gives it away, himself, spinning ’round on one leg. That’s just how much sense he has.” “Which side of the hill, I wonder,” went on Wendell, turning to the Beauteous Maiden, but to his startled surprise, she had vanished, and there sat the frog, as green, as goggle-eyed, as unintelligent, as altogether repulsive as if it had never won a beauty contest in its life. CHAPTER VII WENDELL WORKS THE MIDNIGHT SPELL “How did she get that way?” he asked the Pixie, who only smiled gleefully and returned, “It’s a great life, isn’t it, this fairy story business!” “Well, I suppose I’ve got to do it,” said the harassed boy. “How I’m ever going to stay awake till midnight, I don’t see.” “Oh, I’ll wake you, my boy,” said the Pixie obligingly. “You go to bed.” “And what am I going to do with him--with her?” pursued Wendell, pointing vindictively to the frog. “Now I know what she is, I’ve got to make her comfortable somewhere. She can’t sleep in a stocking.” The frog blinked and stared at him. Wendell stared back gloomily. He wondered if different frogs looked different to each other, like boys and dogs. It seemed to him that this frog was particularly ugly, even judged by frog standards of beauty. Well, poor thing! that was probably the Kobold’s fault. “I know what I’ll do with her,” he said. “I’ll put her in the guest chamber for the night. She’ll like that. Virginia’s away overnight.” It wasn’t very easy to catch the frog. It eluded Wendell with long-legged leaps, but Wendell cornered it at last, with the help of the Pixie, and carried it, its little heart pulsating with fright, to the dainty room that Cousin Virginia occupied, and tucked it into bed. “One good job done,” said Wendell to himself. “I won’t have to sleep with _that_ in the room to-night.” “Well, old chap, I guess I’ll go to bed now,” he said, yawning, to the Pixie, “and if you _will_ call me, say about eleven-thirty, I’ll be much obliged.”