126 Fairy Tales

_ was feeling that day as if contradiction were
pleasant than for any other reason—and Ju-
Ju agreed with each by turns, and they both
hugged him.

However, it really was a woman, with a
basket of honey-cakes on her arm, and she
was the smallest woman you ever saw, and
yet looked bigger than she was, for she
belonged to a tribe of dwarfs who lived in
the heart of a mountain many miles away
across the moor; and as they did not like
to be laughed at for their smallness, when
they came out into the world, which was not
often, they always managed by hook or by
crook to make themselves taller. This old
woman, for instance, was mounted on a pair
of stilts, quite a foot and a half high—per-
haps more—hidden under her quilted petti-
coat. And that for a very particular reason
which you had better hear.

The dwarfs had been greatly annoyed of
late by rude remarks which some boys had
made upon two of their principal people who
had unfortunately been overtaken walking