The Great Big Thing

ONE DAY I WENT OUT WALKING AND SOON came to a huge forest. Presently a great big THING met me. It had a huge long tail that trailed yards and yards behind, I made bold to lay hold of a thick tuft of hair on this great long tail and I let it pull me along behind it. I saw before us the front of a great big castle, and then the THING began to go inside. As for me, I still hung on to its tail and said nothing; so away we went, the THING still pulling me along as before. We went into one room, out again, down a narrow passage into another room, up little crooked stairs and, in short, it went on poking about in all sorts of crooked corners until I was covered with cobwebs.

All at once I stuck fast in one of these narrow places, and then the tail stopped pulling me and, when I looked at my hand, I saw that I was still holding the tuft of hair. I put it down and I stayed where I was, wondering what would happen next. Suddenly all the doors clapped shut and I remembered that I didn't know where the THING had got to! Then I saw that a little dwarf was standing beside me. He said good evening very politely.

"Good evening to you,” I answered.

"Why have you come here?" asked he.

"For my own pleasure," said I.

"Dear, dear!" said the dwarf. "You've taken away our master's strength."

"I'm not going to give it back," said I.

"That's a great misfortune," said the dwarf. "He's lying there struggling for life! Perishing before our very eyes!"

"I can't help that," said I. "What I want is to get out of this castle.”

"I rule over sixteen dwarfs," said the little man. "What will you give us if we get you out again? My dwarfs have all been to school and have learned every­thing."

"My mother has a cow and I have a goat," said I,  "get me home and you shall have one of them."

Well, eight dwarfs went with me. But as soon as we got outside the door what should we see but a fierce dog. But the clever dwarfs had made a stick out of frogs' teeth and they hit the dog on the mouth with it so that the dog ran off in a fright.

We went and we went, till at last we came to a big piece of water. How to get across? But the dwarfs knew what to do about that as well. They made a long rope,  which they twisted out of women's beards and fish's hair and, with it, all eight of them pulled me across.

By-and-by, we found that we had got back into the huge forest. It seemed that the clever dwarfs knew exactly which way the THING had pulled me, for back we went by the very same paths. At last we came to my mother's door. I told her where I had been and what had happened and she gave me the goat. I put the eight dwarfs on its back. First I put the biggest and so on to the smallest, and there they sat in a row, as neat as it could be, like the pipes of an organ. As soon as the dwarfs were quite ready, I gave a push to the goat.

Away she ran and I've never seen any of them again.