goblin locks. -- See the shining ore! One, two, three -- Bright as gold can be! Four, five, six -- Shovels, mattocks, picks! Seven, eight, nine -- Light your lamp at mine. Ten, eleven, twelve -- Loosely hold the helve. We're the merry miner-boys, Make the goblins hold their noise.' 'I wish YOU would hold your noise,' said the nurse rudely, for the very word GOBLIN at such a time and in such a place made her tremble. It would bring the goblins upon them to a certainty, she thought, to defy them in that way. But whether the boy heard her or not, he did not stop his singing. 'Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen -- This is worth the siftin'; Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen -- There's the match, and lay't in. Nineteen, twenty -- Goblins in a plenty.' 'Do be quiet,' cried the nurse, in a whispered shriek. But the boy, who was now close at hand, still went on. 'Hush! Scush! Scurry! There you go in a hurry! Gobble! Gobble! Goblin! There you go a wobblin'; Hobble, hobble, hobblin' -- Cobble! Cobble! Cobblin'! Hob-bob-goblin! -- Huuuuuh!' 'There!' said the boy, as he stood still opposite them. 'There! That'll do for them. They can't bear singing, and they can't stand that song. They can't sing themselves, for they have no more voice than a crow; and they don't like other people to sing.' The boy was dressed in a miner's dress, with a curious cap on his head. He was a very nice-looking boy, with eyes as dark as the mines in which he worked and as sparkling as the crystals in their rocks. He was about twelve years old. His face was almost too pale for beauty, which came of his being so little in the open air and the sunlight -- for even vegetables grown in the dark are white; but he looked happy, merry indeed -- perhaps at the thought of having routed the goblins; and his bearing as he stood before them had nothing clownish or rude about it. 'I saw them,' he went on, 'as I came up; and I'm very glad I did. I knew they were after somebody, but I couldn't see who it was. They won't touch you so long as I'm with you.' 'Why, who are you?' asked the nurse, offended at the freedom with which he spoke to them. 'I'm Peter's son.' 'Who's Peter?' 'Peter the miner.' 'I don't know him.' 'I'm his son, though.' 'And why should the goblins mind you, pray?' 'Because I don't mind them. I'm used to them.' 'What difference does that make?' 'If you're not afraid of them, they're afraid of you. I'm not afraid of them. That's all. But it's all that's wanted -- up here, that is. It's a different thing down there. They won't always mind that song even, down there. And if anyone sings it, they stand grinning at him awfully; and if he gets frightened, and misses a word, or says a wrong one, they -- oh! don't they give it him!' 'What do they do to him?' asked Irene, with a trembling voice. 

 Prev. P 16/127 next