"I will show you the doorkeeper soon," promised the Confectioner, "but for goodness' sake don't tell him that you know he's a doorkeeper. He thinks he's simply a chocolate grub on his way to become a chocolate butterfly; in fact, we have nominated another doorkeeper to take his place if this ever comes off. This other person isn't really a doorkeeper either, but there's one thing he can do, and that is, he can make the latch and the hinge grow again when somebody has eaten them." The Confectioner looked at Redy and Smaly very severely when he said this. [Illustration: THEY WERE KNOWN AS THE "WIGS" BECAUSE OF THEIR LARGE PERUKES _Page 15_] They both felt extremely embarrassed. * * * * * With his nail, which looked exactly like a horn salt-spoon, the Confectioner scraped the inner side of the door just beside the latch, and Redy and Smaly saw the chocolate grow again as rapidly as he scraped it away. The Confectioner gave a little exclamation of annoyance, and began to hunt for his magic ring amongst all the things he had thrown to the ground; but he could not find it. This ring had the power of preventing both plants and things from growing, and without it the Confectioner was unable to prevent the chocolate door from replacing itself as fast as he scraped it away. Nevertheless Smaly and Redy started to help him, and they all three scraped so hard that they caught a glimpse in the interior of the door of a tiny creature sitting in a niche. This creature was a grub about the size of a nut. Round its waist it wore a key as big as itself, and on its head a fur bonnet, which nodded forward to its chest. "It's asleep," said the little man to the little woman. * * * * * At this moment a Crow made of bilberry preserve and liquorice hopped up to them. This Crow was the doorkeeper who was yet not the doorkeeper; and who had been nominated in the place of the grub. The grub was really the doorkeeper; but always refused to admit it. [Illustration: NEVERTHELESS SMALY AND REDY STARTED TO HELP HIM] The Crow, who seemed convulsed with rage, seized Redy in one claw and Smaly in the other, preparatory to throwing them outside once more. At this dangerous moment Smaly once again found his beak crying out of itself. This time he heard it say that he wished to speak to the Chief Contractor. The Crow lifted him up by his waistband, and gazed at him with his big bright eye like a magnifying-glass, then he dropped him. "Why, it's made of suet!" he cried in disgust. He turned his eye upon Redy, who appeared to him much better looking with her delicate little blue beak, which had a bloom on it like a grape. Unlike the Confectioner, the Crow was perfectly well able to perceive the beaks of Smaly and Redy, for he himself was a bird, and to no one save a bird or each other were their beaks visible.