Dame Grey, "tell us who you are, little Sir, and what you
are. Do you know that you have spoilt all my cream, and broken my best
china-cup? Speak up now! What have you to say for yourself?"

The Elf was very angry, but it would never do to show it. So he tried
to look as gentle as a good child reading a book. He rubbed some of
the yellow of the egg off his chin, and stuck it on his leg like a
buttercup. He shrugged his shoulders up in a bunch, and then, with a
sneeze as if he had caught cold in the forest, he began:

"Nine white witches sat in a circle close,
With their backs against a greenwood tree,
As around the dead-nettle's summer stem
Its woolly white blossoms you see.
Then from hedges and ditches, these old lady-witches,
Took bird-weed and rag-weed and spear-grass for me,
And they wove me a bower, 'gainst the snow-storm or shower,
In a dry old hollow beech tree.
_Twangle tee!_
_Ri-rigdum, dingle shade-laugh, tingle dee!_"

"Nonsense!" said Grandmother Grey. "You can't fool me with your nettles,
and nonsense, and hedges, and ditches. What do I care about all that?
You know as well as I do that you came here to _steal cake_ and _drink
cream_. Besides, you have broken my best china-cup!"

The Elf gave a sigh, and looked up in the air; then took a glance at
Martha's broom, and as he looked down he thought he saw Toody winking at
him. So he just smiled and said: "I declare, by the tom-tit's folly, and
the mole's pin-hole eye, and the woodpecker's thorny tongue, that I have
told you the truth."

Noticing that Toody was still winking at him he kept on, and told the
following story:

"One day when I was loafing about in the wood I heard a strange noise in
the bushes. I peeped over the edge, and there was a robin bathing in the
brook. It ruffled its feathers with a spattering sound, made itself into
a fussy ball, and threw up a shower of water; but what I most noticed
was its eye--its eye!--"

"Its eye--its eye?" broke in all the children. "What about its eye?"

The Elf glanced again at Toody, and he saw that this time she gave him a
quiet nod, as much as to say, "I'll find you a chance." So the Elf gave
a downward squint at the closed cage-door, just for a hint. Then he
scratched his cheek, jumped down on the floor of the cage, and began to
act out a "robin," just as if he were on the stage.

"Its eye--its eye? Well, just as soon as it caught a gli