Thus Amelia’s tasks were ended; but not a word was said of her return home. The dwarfs were now very kind, and made so much of her that it was evident that they meant her to remain with them. Amelia often cooked for them, and she danced and played with them, and never showed a sign of discontent; but her heart ached for home, and when she was alone she would bury her face in the flowers and cry for her mother.

One day she overheard the dwarfs in consultation.

“The moon is full to-morrow,” said one—(“Then I have been a month down here,” thought Amelia; “it was full moon that night”)—“shall we dance in the Mary Meads?”

“By all means,” said the old tinker dwarf; “and we will take Amelia, and dance my dance.”

“Is it safe?” said another.

“Look how content she is,” said the old dwarf; “and, oh! how she dances; my feet tickle at the bare thought.”

“The ordinary run of mortals do not see us,” continued the objector; “but she is visible to any one. And there are men and women who wander in the moonlight, and the Mary Meads are near her old home.”

“I will make her a hat of touchwood,” said the old dwarf, “so that even if she is seen it will look like a will-o’-the-wisp bobbing up and down. If she does not come, I will not. I must dance my dance. You do not know what it is! We two alone move together with a grace which even here is remarkable. But when I think that up yonder we shall have attendant shadows echoing our movements, I long for the moment to arrive.”

“So be it,” said the others; and Amelia wore the touchwood hat, and went up with them to the Mary Meads.

Amelia and the dwarf danced the mazurka, and their shadows, now as short as themselves, then long and gigantic, danced beside them. As the moon went down, and the shadows lengthened, the dwarf was in raptures.

“When one sees how colossal one’s very shadow is,” he remarked, “one knows one’s true worth. You also have a good shadow. We are partners in the dance, and I think we will be partners for life. But I have not fully considered the matter, so this is not to be regarded as a formal proposal.” And he continued to dance, singing, “LÂ, la, fa, lÂ, lÂ, la, fa, lÂ.” It was highly admired.

The Mary Meads lay a little below the house where Amelia’s parents lived, and once during the night her father, who was watching by the sick bed of the stock, looked out of the window.

“How lovely the moonlight is!” he murmured; “but, dear me! there is a will-o’-the-wisp yonder. I had no idea the Mary Meads were so damp.” Then he pulled the blind down and went back into the room.

As for poor Amelia, she found no four-leaved clover, and at cockcrow they all went underground.

“We will dance on Hunch Hill to-morrow,” said the dwarfs.

All went as before; not a clover plant of any kind did Amelia see, and at cockcrow the revel broke up.

On the following night they danced in the hayfield. The old stubble was now almost hidden by green clover. There was a grand fairy dance—a round dance, which does not mean, as with us, a dance for two partners, but a dance where all join hands and dance round and round in a circle with appropriate antics. Round they went, faster and faster, the pointed shoes now meeting in the centre like the spokes of a wheel now kicked out behind like spikes, and then scamper, caper, hurry! They seemed to fly, when suddenly the ring broke at one corner, and nothing being stronger than its weakest point, the whole circle were sent flying over the field.

“Ho, ho, ho!” laughed the dwarfs, for they are good-humored little folk, and do not mind a tumble.

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Amelia, for she had fallen with her fingers on a four-leaved clover.

She put it behind her back, for the old tinker dwarf was coming up to her, wiping the mud from his face with his leathern apron.

“Now for our dance!” he shrieked. “And I have made up my mind—partners now and partners always. You are incomparable. For three hundred years I have not met with your equal.”

But Amelia held the four-leaved clover above her head, and cried from her very heart—“I want to go home!”

The dwarf gave a hideous yell of disappointment, and at this instant the stock came stumbling head over heels into the midst, crying—“Oh! the pills, the powders, and the draughts! oh, the lotions and embrocations! oh, the blisters, the poultices, and the plasters! men may well be so short-lived!”

And Amelia found herself in bed in her own home.