a pleasant idea
of dinner. "Well, what would you like to have? Let the little one
choose."

She said, after thinking a minute, that she should like a currant-cake.

"And I'd give all you a bit of it--a very large bit--I would indeed!"
added she, almost with the tears in her eyes--she was so very hungry.

"Do it, then!" said the Brownie, in his little squeaking voice.

Immediately the stone that the little girl was sitting on--a round, hard
stone, and so cold!--turned into a nice hot cake--so hot that she jumped
up directly. As soon as she saw what it was, she clapped her hands for
joy.

"Oh, what a beautiful, beautiful cake! only we haven't got a knife to
cut it."

The boys felt in all their pockets, but somehow their knives never were
there when they were wanted.

"Look! you've got one in your hand!" said Brownie to the little one; and
that minute a bit of stick she held turned into a bread-knife--silver,
with an ivory handle--big enough and sharp enough, without being too
sharp. For the youngest girl was not allowed to use sharp knives, though
she liked cutting things excessively, especially cakes.

"That will do. Sit you down and carve the dinner. Fair shares and don't
let any body eat too much. Now begin, ma'am," said the Brownie, quite
politely, as if she had been ever so old.

Oh, how proud the little girl was. How bravely she set to work, and cut
five of the biggest slices you ever saw, and gave them to her brothers
and sisters, and was just going to take the sixth slice for herself,
when she remembered the Brownie.

"I beg your pardon," said she, as politely as he, though she was such a
very little girl, and turned round to the wee brown man. But he was
nowhere to be seen. The slices of cake in the children's hands remained
cake, and uncommonly good it was, and such substantial eating that it
did nearly the same as dinner; but the cake itself turned suddenly to a
stone again, and the knife into a bit of stick.

For there was the Gardener coming clumping along by the bank of the
lake, and growling as he went.

"Have you got the kangaroo?" shouted the children, determined to be
civil, if possible.

"This place is bewitched, I think," said he, "The kangaroo was fast
asleep in the cow-shed. What! how dare you laugh at me?"

But they hadn't laughed at all. And they found it no laughing matter,
poor children, when Gardener came on the ice, and began to scold them
and order them about. He was perfectl