_real_, you know," said Kaethe and began to
cry again.

"Kaethchen," said Green Ears, and he looked quite serious and thinky all
at once. "Listen to me. I will go to the Old King; he is the ruler of
all the fairies here, and I will beg him to teach me how to become
human. It may be years before we meet again, for the way into your world
is very hard for me to find. Yes it is easier for you to find the way
into our world, than for us to enter yours; but cheer up, I will dare it
and do it for your sake! but O sweetheart wait for me; O wait for me!"

"Wait for me, my little sweetheart,
Till I come to you again,
Win the world for you, my sweetheart,
With its joy and with its pain.

Wait for me, my little sweetheart,
For when falling on the ground
I beheld those curious dewdrops
To your heart my heart was bound.

All my fairy life is nothing,
All my fairy joy I give,
Just to hold your hands, my sweetheart,
In your world with you to live.

Wait for me, my little sweetheart:
I will find the way to you,
As a grown man I will seek you,
Seek and find you ever true."

So singing they walked arm in arm through the long winding valley, till
the dawn approached like a golden bird opening its great wings to fly.

Kaethchen reached her cottage door. All was silent within. "Good-bye,"
she said, and their eyes met in one last farewell.

"Auf Wiedersehen!" said Green Ears (that pretty German farewell greeting
which means so much more than good-bye), and then he stole back down the
stony street, kissing his hands again and again to the little girl.

In some strange way Kaethchen passed _through_ the door of her little
cottage; she had become for the time incorporeal; through the touch of a
fairy her body and soul had become _loose_, that is to say, and she was
able to enter the house as silently as a person in a dream. She went
through the kitchen and up the steep wooden stairs. It seemed to her as
if her feet did not touch the ground, she floated rather than walked.
She reached her own little attic, and saw the room as if it were a
picture, the square window-frame, the branches of the trees outside,
the old pictures on the walls that she was so fond of.

But what was her surprise to see _herself_ curled up asleep in her big
wooden bed!

The horror of it made her faint, and she remembered no more until she
found herself in her own bed under her own big feather sack. In order