all that but for the sight of his rather wizened old face one could
hardly have believed he was a full-grown man. His eyes were bright and
beady-looking, like those of a good-natured little weasel, if there be
such a thing, and his face lighted up with a smile as he caught sight of
the two, to him, strange-looking children at the open window of the
little village inn.

"Guten Tag," he said, nodding to them; and "Guten Tag," replied the
children, as they had learnt to do by this time to everybody they met.
For in these remote villages it would be thought the greatest breach of
courtesy to pass any one without this friendly greeting.

Rex drew a long breath when the dwarf had passed.

"Olive----" he began, but Olive interrupted him.

"Rex," she said eagerly, "that's _exactly_ like them--like the blue
dwarfs, I mean. Only, of course, their faces were prettier--nice little
china faces, rather crumply looking, but quite nice; and then their
coats were such a pretty nice blue. I think," she went on
consideringly--"I think, if I had that little man and washed his face
_very_ well, and got him a bright blue coat, he would look just like one
of the blue dwarfs grown big."

Rex looked at Olive with a queer expression.

"Olive," he said in rather an awe-struck tone; "Olive, do you think
perhaps they're _real_? Do you think perhaps somewhere in this
country--in those queer dark woods, perhaps--that there are real blue
dwarfs, and that somebody must have seen them and made the little china
ones like them? Perhaps," and his voice dropped and grew still more
solemn; "_perhaps_, Olive, that little man's one of them, and they may
have to take off their blue coats when they're walking about. Do you
know, I think it's a little, just a very little frightening? Don't you,
Olive?"

"No, of course I don't," said Olive, and, to do her justice, her rather
sharp answer was meant as much to reassure her little brother as to
express any feeling of impatience. Rex was quite a little fellow, only
eight, and Olive, who was nearly twelve, remembered, that when she was
as little as that, she used sometimes to feel frightened about things
which she now couldn't see anything the least frightening in. And she
remembered how once or twice some of her big cousins had laughed at her,
and amused themselves by telling her all sorts of nonsense, which still
seemed terrible to her when she was alone in her room in the dark at
night. "Of course there's no