'

'Who are your sons?' asked the Prince.

'Well that's not so easy to answer when the question is stupidly put,'
said the woman. 'My sons do as they like; they are playing rounders now
with the clouds up there in the great hall,' and she pointed up into the
sky.

'Oh indeed!' said the Prince. 'You seem to speak very harshly, and you
are not so gentle as the women I generally see about me!'

'Oh, I daresay they have nothing else to do! I have to be harsh if I am
to keep my boys under control! But I can do it, although they are a
stiff-necked lot! Do you see those four sacks hanging on the wall? They
are just as frightened of them as you used to be of the cane behind the
looking-glass. I can double the boys up, I can tell you, and then they
have to go into the bag; we don't stand upon ceremony, and there they
have to stay; they can't get out to play their tricks till it suits me
to let them. But here we have one of them.' It was the Northwind who
came in with an icy blast; great hailstones peppered about the floor and
snow-flakes drifted in. He was dressed in bearskin trousers and jacket,
and he had a sealskin cap drawn over his ears. Long icicles were
hanging from his beard, and one hailstone after another dropped down
from the collar of his jacket.

'Don't go straight to the fire,' said the Prince. 'You might easily get
chilblains!'

'Chilblains!' said the Northwind with a loud laugh. 'Chilblains! they
are my greatest delight! What sort of a feeble creature are you? How did
you get into the cave of the winds?'

'He is my guest,' said the old woman, 'and if you are not pleased with
that explanation you may go into the bag! Now you know my opinion!'

This had its effect, and the Northwind told them where he came from, and
where he had been for the last month.

'I come from the Arctic seas,' he said. 'I have been on Behring Island
with the Russian walrus-hunters. I sat at the helm and slept when they
sailed from the north cape, and when I woke now and then the stormy
petrels were flying about my legs. They are queer birds; they give a
brisk flap with their wings and then keep them stretched out and
motionless, and even then they have speed enough.'

'Pray don't be too long-winded,' said the mother of the winds. 'So at
last you got to Behring Island!'

'It's perfectly splendid! There you have a floor to dance upon, as flat
as a pancake, half-thawed snow, with moss. There were bones of whales
and Polar bears l