“Goodnight, Empress, Buddha preserve your Majesty!”
“But I am not an Empress any more!” said Nikko sadly. “Lu Tsing is Empress of China.”
“Oh well,” replied the Snail, “Lu Tsing may be Empress of China, but I’m sure you are Empress of everywhere else!”
“Lazybones,” said the Snail with his great-auntliest air, “look it up on the map!”
So they continued to bow, and the Spider (who didn’t look it up) embroidered a little sampler with these words on it and fastened it over Nikko’s door:
“Here under curtains magnificent dwells Nikko, the Empress of Everywhere Else!”
Once upon a time there was a man who lived in a dark hut under a willow tree. His face, and his wife’s face, and the faces of their six black-haired children, were as dark and gnarled as the willow trunk. But when their seventh son was born, he was a light-haired boy, with clear blue eyes, and a smile like golden sunshine.
“This is not our child!” cried the black-eyed man and the black-eyed woman; “this yellow-haired baby is a changeling; the dwarfs have put him into the cradle!” So they called him Peter Dwarf. They were very unkind to him, and when he grew older they made him do hard, ugly work, like picking nettles and killing lambs. Peter liked to work, but he did not at all like to kill poor little lambs.
One day it happened that the cat got into the larder and ate a big piece of meat. The black-eyed woman took her by the tail and flung her out of the window at Peter Dwarf, telling him that he must get rid of her at once. But when he had the lovely white cat in his arms, she looked at him so pleadingly that tears came into his eyes, and he said: “Minka, I cannot hurt you! But if I don’t obey, my father and mother will be very angry.’” But the cat still looked at him so sorrowfully that he said: “Minka, let us both run away. You shall not be harmed.”
They walked over many fields where corn and beans grew in rows and the rabbits jumped away as they came. When night fell they had reached a mountain, and there were no more fields, only roots and rocks and shadowy trees.
“Let us go into a cave to sleep,” Peter Dwarf suggested. So they crept into a deep cavern, which seemed to have no end. Peter spread his coat and lay down; but Minka crept into all the dark crannies mewing and scratching, and finally she disappeared. When Peter heard her come back again, he could only see her eyes, shining like stars in the rocky passage.