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“Ho, ho, ho!” laughed all the others, as they poked out here and there from the hay.

“Bring a stock,” said the dwarf; on which the hay was lifted, and out ran six or seven dwarfs, carrying what seemed to Amelia to be a little girl like herself. And when she looked closer, to her horror and surprise the figure was exactly like her–it was her own face, clothes, and everything.

“Shall we kick it into the house?” asked the goblins.

“No,” said the dwarf; “lay it down by the haycock. The father and mother are coming to seek her now.”

When Amelia heard this she began to shriek for help; but she was pushed into the haycock, where her loudest cries sounded like the chirruping of a grasshopper.

It was really a fine sight to see the inside of the cock.

Farmers do not like to see flowers in a hayfield, but the fairies do. They had arranged all the buttercups, etc., in patterns on the haywalls; bunches of meadow-sweet swung from the roof like censers, and perfumed the air; and the ox-eye daisies which formed the ceiling gave a light like stars. But Amelia cared for none of this. She only struggled to peep through the hay, and she did see her father and mother and nurse come down the lawn, followed by the other servants, looking for her. When they saw the stock they ran to raise it with exclamations of pity and surprise. The stock moaned faintly, and Amelia’s mamma wept, and Amelia herself shouted with all her might.

“What’s that?” said her mamma. (It is not easy to deceive a mother.)

“Only the grasshoppers, my dear,” said Papa. “Let us get the poor child home.”

The stock moaned again, and the mother said, “Oh dear! oh dear-r-Ramelia!” and followed in tears.

“Rub her eyes,” said the dwarf; on which Amelia’s eyes were rubbed with some ointment, and when she took a last peep, she could see that the stock was nothing but a hairy imp, with a face like the oldest and most grotesque of apes.

“–and send her below,” added the dwarf. On which the field opened, and Amelia was pushed underground.

She found herself on a sort of open heath, where no houses were to be seen. Of course there was no moonshine, and yet it was neither daylight nor dark. There was as the light of early dawn, and every sound was at once clear and dreamy, like the first sounds of the day coming through the fresh air before sunrise. Beautiful flowers crept over the heath, whose tints were constantly changing in the subdued light; and as the hues changed and blended, the flowers gave forth different perfumes. All would have been charming but that at every few paces the paths were blocked by large clothes-baskets full of dirty frocks, And the frocks were Amelia’s. Torn, draggled, wet, covered with sand, mud, and dirt of all kinds, Amelia recognized them.

“You’ve got to wash them all,” said the dwarf, who was behind her as usual; “that’s what you’ve come down for–not because your society is particularly pleasant. So the sooner you begin the better.”

“I can’t,” said Amelia (she had already learnt that “I won’t” is not an answer for every one); “send them up to Nurse, and she’ll do them. It is her business.”

“What Nurse can do she has done, and now it’s time for you to begin,” said the dwarf. “Sooner or later the mischief done by spoilt children’s wilful disobedience comes back on their own hands. Up to a certain point we help them, for we love children, and we are wilful ourselves. But there are limits to everything. If you can’t wash your dirty frocks, it is time you learnt to do so, if only that you may know what the trouble is you impose on other people. She will teach you.”

The dwarf kicked out his foot in front of him, and pointed with his long toe to a woman who sat by a fire made upon the heath, where a pot was suspended from crossed poles. It was like a bit of a gipsy encampment, and the woman seemed to be a real woman, not a fairy–which was the case, as Amelia afterwards found. She had lived underground for many years, and was the dwarfs’ servant.