Cross Purposes and The Shadows | Page 8

what felt like a warm stone: it moved a
little.
"Go down, you brutes!" growled a voice above, quivering with anger.
"You'll upset my pot and my cat, and my temper too, if you push that
way. Go down!"
Richard knocked very gently, and said: "Please let us out."
"Oh, yes, I dare say! Very fine and soft-spoken! Go down, you goblin
brutes! I've had enough of you. I'll scald the hair off your ugly heads if
you do that again. Go down, I say!"
Seeing fair speech was of no avail, Richard told Alice to go down a
little, out of the way; and, setting his shoulders to one end of the stone,
heaved it up; whereupon down came the other end, with a pot, and a
fire, and a cat which had been asleep beside it. She frightened Alice
dreadfully as she rushed past her, showing nothing but her green
lamping eyes.
Richard, peeping up, found that he had turned a hearth-stone upside
down. On the edge of the hole stood a little crooked old man,
brandishing a mop-stick in a tremendous rage, and hesitating only
where to strike him. But Richard put him out of his difficulty by
springing up and taking the stick from him. Then, having lifted Alice
out, he returned it with a bow, and, heedless of the maledictions of the
old man, proceeded to get the stone and the pot up again. For puss, she
got out of herself.
Then the old man became a little more friendly, and said: "I beg your
pardon, I thought you were goblins. They never will let me alone. But
you must allow, it was rather an unusual way of paying a morning
call." And the creature bowed conciliatingly.

"It was, indeed," answered Richard. "I wish you had turned the door to
us instead of the hearth-stone." For he did not trust the old man. "But,"
he added, "I hope you will forgive us."
"Oh, certainly, certainly, my dear young people! Use your freedom. But
such young people have no business to be out alone. It is against the
rules."
"But what is one to do--I mean two to do--when they can't help it?"
"Yes, yes, of course; but now, you know, I must take charge of you. So
you sit there, young gentleman; and you sit there, young lady."
He put a chair for one at one side of the hearth, and for the other at the
other side, and then drew his chair between them. The cat got upon his
hump, and then set up her own. So here was a wall that would let
through no moonshine. But although both Richard and Alice were very
much amused, they did not like to be parted in this peremptory manner.
Still they thought it better not to anger the old man any more--in his
own house, too.
But he had been once angered, and that was once too often, for he had
made it a rule never to forgive without taking it out in humiliation.
It was so disagreeable to have him sitting there between them, that they
felt as if they were far asunder. In order to get the better of the fancy,
they wanted to hold each other's hand behind the dwarf's back. But the
moment their hands began to approach, the back of the cat began to
grow long, and its hump to grow high; and, in a moment more, Richard
found himself crawling wearily up a steep hill, whose ridge rose against
the stars, while a cold wind blew drearily over it. Not a habitation was
in sight; and Alice had vanished from his eyes. He felt, however, that
she must be somewhere on the other side, and so climbed and climbed
to get over the brow of the hill, and down to where he thought she must
be. But the longer he climbed, the farther off the top of the hill seemed;
till at last he sank quite exhausted, and--must I confess it?--very nearly
began to cry. To think of being separated from Alice all at once, and in
such a disagreeable way! But he fell a-thinking instead, and soon said

to himself: "This must be some trick of that wretched old man. Either
this mountain is a cat or it is not. If it is a mountain, this won't hurt it; if
it is a cat, I hope it will." With that, he pulled out his pocket-knife, and
feeling for a soft place, drove it at one blow up to the handle in the side
of the mountain.
A terrific shriek was the first result; and the second, that Alice and he
sat looking at each other across the old man's hump, from which the
cat-a-mountain had vanished. Their host sat staring