Laura Richards - Snow-White or, The House in the Wood

"Well, I wish it would be pretty soon!" said the child. "I'm pretty hungry, I 'spect p'raps."

She was a brave child; she was hungry, and her legs and feet ached; but she pushed on cheerfully, sometimes talking and singing, sometimes silent, making her way through the tangle of ferns and hanging branches; following the brook, because there was a little boy in the newspaper that her papa read, and he got lost, and just he followed the brook, and it brought him right along to where there were people, and he had blackberries all the way. She looked for blackberries, but they are hard to find in early May, except in the Fairy Books. There, as the child knew very well, you had only to go to the right place and take a broom and brush away the snow, and there you found strawberries, the finest that ever were seen, to take home to your sick sister. It was true that you had to be very good and polite to the proper old woman, or else you would never find the strawberries; but the child would be polite, she truly would. She would sweep the old woman's house, and give her half her own bread – only she had no bread! Here a great pang of emptiness smote the child; she felt that there was a sob about somewhere, waiting to get into her throat. It should not come in; she shook her head, and pressed on. It was all right; God was close by, anyhow, and he had to take care of children, because he said he would. So it was all right, only —

Suddenly the child stopped; for it was all right. She had found the House in the Wood.

Standing breast-high in ferns, she looked away from the brook; and there was a break in the trees, and beyond the break a space of sunny green, with a huge tree in the middle; and on the farther side the house itself. Gray and silent; leaning against a great rock-face behind it; the door shut, but the windows standing wide open; the roof all green and blossoming, like a queer little garden place, – there it was, exactly the way it was in the Fairy Books. The child saw at once that there was no danger of cannibal old women here. This house was not made of pancakes, and the windows were not barley sugar at all, but plain glass. No, this was the house of the Seven Dwarfs; and she was really in a fairy story, and she was going to have the best time she had ever had in her life.

The child stood quiet for a few minutes, looking in pure delight. Perhaps one of the dwarfs would come out. She thought she might feel a little shy if one were to come out just this very minute. Then she remembered that they must all be out at work in the forest, for they always were, and they did not come back till night.

"Well, I can't wait!" she said, decidedly. "First place, Snow-white didn't, not a minute she didn't wait. And besides, I'm too hungry, and I s'pose everything is ready and waiting inside, and so I'll go."

She advanced boldly across the green, but paused again at the door. No sound came from the house. The creepers waved on the roof, the birds made an amazed and amazing chatter in the great buttonwood-tree; but that was all. The child pushed the door, the latch yielded, and the door swung slowly open. Two steps, and she stood inside.

Even the very bravest child may be excused for feeling a little strange in such a house as this. She felt her heart beating in her ears, and her throat was dry; but as she looked about her, everything was so perfectly right that her sense of fitness asserted itself once more, and she was content and glad. The room in which she stood was not large, except for dwarfs; for them it would be a great hall. It was floored and walled with clean, shining wood, and there were two doors, one at either end. There was an open fire-place, in which two black iron dogs with curly tails held up some logs of wood that were smouldering and purring in a comfortable way, as if they had been lighted more for pleasure than for warmth. Near the fire stood an easy-chair, and another chair was drawn up by a table that stood in the window. It was on seeing this table that the child began to fear all was not quite right. It was a neat little table, just about high enough for dwarfs, if they were not very short dwarfs; it was laid with a snowy cloth, as they always are; but – where were the seven places? there was only one at this table. There was a plate, a knife and fork, a cup and saucer, a little loaf of bread and a little pat of butter, a pitcher of milk, and a comb of golden honey. What did this mean?

"Well, I can't help it," said the child, suddenly. "If they is gone away all but one of them, I can't help it; they shouldn't play that way, and I'm hungry. Just I'll take a little bit, as Snow-white did. Just that's what I'll do!"

She seated herself at the table, and poured some milk into the cup. Oh, how good it was! She broke off a bit of bread, and nibbled it; her spirits rose, and she began to feel again that she was having the most splendid time that ever was. She broke out into her song —

Then she stopped, for the door of the further room opened quietly, and the dwarf came in.

The child's song broke off in a little scream, for things are sometimes startling even when you have been expecting them; but the scream bubbled into a laugh. "Ah! I – I mean I'm laughing because you look so funny. I took some bread and milk because I was hungry." She stopped abruptly, feeling that sob somewhere about her again. The dwarf advanced toward her, and she held on to the back of the chair; but he held out his hand and smiled.

"How do you do?" he said. "I am very glad to see you; pray sit down again and finish your supper."

"It's your supper," said the child, who was honest. "I didn't mean to steal it; I don't know p'r'aps there isn't enough for both of us." She had a way of leaving out words in her sentences that sometimes confused people, but the dwarf seemed to understand.

"There's plenty for both!" he said. "Come! I'll sit down here, and you shall give me some milk. I am hungry, too. Have some honey!" He nodded at her, and smiled again; he had the most delightful smile the child had ever seen. Somebody once said you could warm yourself at it as at a fire. The child took a piece of bread, and looked at him over it as she nibbled. He was not a tiny dwarf, not one of the kind that get into flowers, and fight with grass-blades, and that sort of thing. No, indeed! he was just a little man; why, he was taller than she was, though not so very much taller. He had brown hair and a soft brown beard; his eyes were brown, too, and full of light. All brown and gray, for his dress was gray and soft, "kind of humplety velvet," the child said to herself, though it was really only corduroy. He seemed all of a piece with the house, and the gray rock behind it. Now he looked at her, and smiled again.

"You look as if you were wondering something very much," he said. "Have some more milk! What are you wondering?"

"Partly I was wondering where the rest of you was!" said the child.

"The rest of me?" said the man. "There isn't any more of me. This is all there is. Don't you think it's enough?" He smiled still, but this time it was only his mouth, and his eyes looked dark, as if something hurt him.

"I mean the others," the child explained. "The rest of the seven. I guess it's six, p'r'aps. There was seven of 'em where Snow-white came to, you know."

"Seven what?" asked the man.

"Dwarfs!" said the child.

"Oh!" said the man.

He was silent for a moment, as if he were thinking; then he laughed, and the child laughed, too. "Isn't it funny?" she said. "What are you laughing at?"

"Yes, it is funny!" said the man. "Why, you are just like Snow-white, aren't you? but there aren't any more dwarfs. I'm the only one there is here."