and it does you honor.
But you should know that a Dryad can make no person younger but one who
lets her out of her tree. However, you can manage the affair very
easily. All you need do is to find the Dryad, tell her what you want,
and request her to step into her tree and be shut up for a short time.
Then you will go and bring your mother to the tree; she will open it,
and everything will be as you wish. Is not this a good plan?"

"Excellent!" cried Old Pipes; "and I will go instantly and search more
diligently for the Dryad."

"Take me with you," said the Echo-dwarf. "You can easily carry me on
your strong shoulders; and I shall be glad to help you in any way that I
can."

"Now then," said the little fellow to himself, as Old Pipes carried him
rapidly along, "if he persuades the Dryad to get into a tree,--and she
is quite foolish enough to do it,--and then goes away to bring his
mother, I shall take a stone or a club and I will break off the key of
that tree, so that nobody can ever turn it again. Then Mistress Dryad
will see what she has brought upon herself by her behavior to me."

Before long they came to the great oak tree in which the Dryad had
lived, and at a distance they saw that beautiful creature herself coming
toward them.

"How excellently well everything happens!" said the dwarf. "Put me
down, and I will go. Your business with the Dryad is more important
than mine; and you need not say anything about my having suggested your
plan to you. I am willing that you should have all the credit of it
yourself."

Old Pipes put the Echo-dwarf upon the ground, but the little rogue did
not go away. He hid himself between some low, mossy rocks, and he was so
much like them in color that you would not have noticed him if you had
been looking straight at him.

When the Dryad came up, Old Pipes lost no time in telling her about his
mother, and what he wished her to do. At first, the Dryad answered
nothing, but stood looking very sadly at Old Pipes.

"Do you really wish me to go into my tree again?" she said. "I should
dreadfully dislike to do it, for I don't know what might happen. It is
not at all necessary, for I could make your mother younger at any time
if she would give me the opportunity. I had already thought of making
you still happier in this way, and several times I have waited about
your cottage, hoping to meet your aged mother, but she never comes
outside, and you know a Dryad cannot enter a house. I