She dropped her fine laces and ran towards the door, calling, “Little Daughter! Little Daughter! Where are you?” and she reached out her hands to stop the door.
But as soon as the little girl heard that loving voice she answered:
“Mother! Oh, Mother! I need you so! My pearl is turning black and everything is wrong!” and, flinging the door wide open, she ran into her mother’s arms.
When the two went together into the little room, the goblin had gone. The pansies now bloomed again, and the white dove cooed in peace; but there was much work for the mother and daughter, and they rubbed and scrubbed and washed and swept and dusted, till the room was so beautiful that you would not have known that a goblin had been there--except for the one pearl which was a little blue always, even when the king was ready for Little Daughter to come to his court, although that was not until she was a very old woman.
As for the door, it was never closed again; for Little Daughter and her mother put two golden hearts against it and nothing in this world could have shut it then.
As the story ended, the Story Lady paused while the clock ticked twice, and then said, “Next we will have a funny story about a silver teapot.”
“I SEE it, I see it!” cried Tom eagerly, balancing himself perilously over the well-curb. “It’s down at the bottom!”
“Did you suppose it would float?” asked Bess, with a touch of scorn in her tones.
“Let me see,” cried Bob, pushing forward.
“You clear out,” said Archie; “you’re to blame for dropping it in; you’d better go before you tumble in yourself, you little goose.”
Archie’s broken arm felt very stiff to-day, and his temper was slightly damaged, too. All four children gathered around the well, at the bottom of which lay the silver teapot, like truth, bright and shining, but apparently not to be recovered by mortals.
Mr. Bradley had gone to the village, and the children were determined to get the silver teapot up before his return, for as yet they had not thought it necessary to mention its disappearance, and Mr. Bradley was not the man to notice its absence.
“Of course, if it was lost we should have to tell,” Bess had said to her brother; “but as long as we know where it is, and that it’s safe, there’s no need to say anything about it.”