wer.

"Hollo! Gluck, my boy," said the pot again.

Gluck summoned all his energies, walked straight up to the crucible,
drew it out of the furnace and looked in. The gold was all melted, and
its surface as smooth and polished as a river; but instead of its
reflecting little Gluck's head, as he looked in, he saw meeting his
glance, from beneath the gold, the red nose and the sharp eyes of his
old friend of the mug, a thousand times redder and sharper than ever he
had seen them in his life.

"Come, Gluck, my boy," said the voice out of the pot again, "I'm all
right; pour me out."

But Gluck was too much astonished to do anything of the kind.

"Pour me out, I say," said the voice, rather gruffly.

Still Gluck couldn't move.

"_Will_ you pour me out?" said the voice, passionately. "I'm too hot."

By a violent effort, Gluck recovered the use of his limbs, took hold of
the crucible, and sloped it so as to pour out the gold. But instead of a
liquid stream, there came out, first, a pair of pretty little yellow
legs, then some coat-tails, then a pair of arms stuck akimbo, and,
finally, the well-known head of his friend the mug; all which articles,
uniting as they rolled out, stood up energetically on the floor, in the
shape of a little golden dwarf, about a foot and a half high.

"That's right!" said the dwarf, stretching out first his legs, and then
his arms, and then shaking his head up and down, and as far round as it
would go, for five minutes, without stopping; apparently with the view
of ascertaining if he were quite correctly put together, while Gluck
stood contemplating him in speechless amazement. He was dressed in a
slashed doublet of spun gold, so fine in its texture that the prismatic
colors gleamed over it, as if on a surface of mother-of-pearl; and over
this brilliant doublet his hair and beard fell full half-way to the
ground, in waving curls, so exquisitely delicate, that Gluck could
hardly tell where they ended; they seemed to melt into air. The features
of the face, however, were by no means finished with the same delicacy;
they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in complexion,
and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and intractable
disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had finished his
self-examination, he turned his small, sharp eyes full on Gluck, and
stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it wouldn't, Gluck,
my boy," said the little man.