figure. Indeed, he might as well have been made a
prince as a sweep, since he was only make-believe; for though everywhere
else he was as black as a coal, his round, bright face was as fresh and
rosy as a girl's. This was certainly a mistake--it ought to have been
black.

There he stood so prettily, with his ladder in his hand, quite close to
the shepherdess. From the first he had been placed there, and he always
remained on the same spot; for they had promised to be true to each
other. They suited each other exactly--they were both young, both of the
same kind of porcelain, and both equally fragile.

Close to them stood another figure three times as large as themselves.
It was an old Chinaman, a mandarin, who could nod his head. He was of
porcelain, too, and he said he was the grandfather of the shepherdess; but
this he could not prove. He insisted that he had authority over her, and
so when the crooked-legged field-marshal-major-general-corporal-sergeant
made proposals to the little shepherdess, he nodded his head, in token
of his consent.

"You will have a husband," said the old mandarin to her, "a husband who,
I verily believe, is of mahogany wood. You will be the wife of a
field-marshal-major-general-corporal-sergeant, of a man who has a whole
cabinet full of silver plate, besides a store of no one knows what in
the secret drawers."

"I will never go into that dismal cabinet," declared the little
shepherdess. "I have heard it said that there are eleven porcelain
ladies already imprisoned there."

"Then," rejoined the mandarin, "you will be the twelfth, and you will be
in good company. This very night, when the old cabinet creaks, we shall
keep the wedding, as surely as I am a Chinese mandarin." And upon this
he nodded his head and fell asleep.

But the little shepherdess wept, and turned to the beloved of her heart,
the porcelain chimney sweep.

"I believe I must ask you," she said, "to go out with me into the wide
world, for here it is not possible for us to stay."

"I will do in everything as you wish," replied the little chimney sweep.
"Let us go at once. I am sure I can support you by my trade."

"If we were only down from the table," said she. "I shall not feel safe
till we are far away out in the wide world and free."

The little chimney sweep comforted her, and showed her how to set her
little foot on the carved edges, and on the gilded foliage twining round
the leg of the table, till at last the