He was ever so dinky, but as cheerful-looking as a robin, in his bright red cloak and his quaint steeple hat; the face under the hat was almost as brown as an apple-pip, and only a shade or two lighter than his whiskers and beard, and his queer little eyes were full of laughter and fun. 'Are the little maid and her grannie asleep?' called a voice through the keyhole as the Dinky Man sat on the latch surveying the room. 'I think so,' he answered. 'They are still as mice when Madam Puss is close to their hole. You are safe to come in.' 'Then in we'll come,' cried the little voice; and in the twinkling of an eye a tiny little fellow dressed in green came through the keyhole and pushed off the Dinky Man sitting on the latch, who fell on his head on old Tamsin's lime-ash floor. Scores of little whiskered Piskeys--some in steeple hats and red flowing cloaks, some in green coats and red caps--came through the keyhole, and when they had swung themselves down by the durn [15] of the door, they looked towards the bed. 'I'll get up on the bed and see if the little maid is really asleep,' said one of the Piskeys; and he climbed up to the top of the fiddle-back chair close to the bed and looked down on the child. 'Is she asleep?' asked the other little Piskeys eagerly. 'As sound asleep as a seven-sleeper,' [16] answered the Dinky Man, 'and so is Grannie Tredinnick,' sending his glance to the head of the bed. 'Get up on to the bed as soon as you like, to order the little maid's dreams--the sooner the better. We are powerless to do harm after twelve o'clock, being the night of the Birth.' 'But we have come to do good, not to do harm,' cried the Piskeys one and all, 'and we will begin at once.' They scrambled up the legs and back of the old fiddle-back chair, and were on the bed in a quick-stick, and took their places near the sleeping child. Some sat all in a row on the edge of the patchwork quilt; some sat, or stood, on the pillow behind the child's bright little head; others were low down on the pillow; and one winking, blinking little Piskey perched himself on her arm and sat cross-legged like a tailor. 'I will be the first to order the little maid's dream,' said one of the Piskeys sitting on the edge of the quilt, and scrambling up, he stepped on to Phillida's nose as light as the feathers which the old Sky Woman had flung down on the moors, and as he walked over the bridge he said: 'Dream, little maid--dream that you are wide awake, and that you and Grannie Tredinnick are sitting at a table covered with a cloth as white as Piskey-wool, [17] and that in the middle of the table is a lovely cake made '"Of the finest of flour And fairy cow's cream-- As sweet as your dream-- And Small People's spice, And everything nice, Kneaded and mixed, And done in a trix In a little dream-bower,"