d said
to me, 'Look here, I will anoint your pilgrim's staff, so that when
you return to your own home and enter the king's castle, you have only
to touch the king with your staff, and violets will spring forth and
cover the whole of it, even in the coldest winter time; so I think I
have given you really something to carry home, and a little more
than something.'"

But before the little mouse explained what this something more
was, she stretched her staff out to the king, and as it touched him
the most beautiful bunch of violets sprang forth and filled the
place with perfume. The smell was so powerful that the mouse-king
ordered the mice who stood nearest the chimney to thrust their tails
into the fire, that there might be a smell of burning, for the perfume
of the violets was overpowering, and not the sort of scent that
every one liked.

"But what was the something more of which you spoke just now?"
asked the mouse-king.

"Why," answered the little mouse, "I think it is what they call
'effect;'" and thereupon she turned the staff round, and behold not
a single flower was to be seen upon it! She now only held the naked
skewer, and lifted it up as a conductor lifts his baton at a
concert. "Violets, the elf told me," continued the mouse, "are for the
sight, the smell, and the touch; so we have only now to produce the
effect of hearing and tasting;" and then, as the little mouse beat
time with her staff, there came sounds of music, not such music as was
heard in the forest, at the elfin feast, but such as is often heard in
the kitchen--the sounds of boiling and roasting. It came quite
suddenly, like wind rushing through the chimneys, and seemed as if
every pot and kettle were boiling over. The fire-shovel clattered down
on the brass fender; and then, quite as suddenly, all was still,--nothing
could be heard but the light, vapory song of the tea-kettle,
which was quite wonderful to hear, for no one could rightly
distinguish whether the kettle was just beginning to boil or going
to stop. And the little pot steamed, and the great pot simmered, but
without any regard for each; indeed there seemed no sense in the
pots at all. And as the little mouse waved her baton still more
wildly, the pots foamed and threw up bubbles, and boiled over; while
again the wind roared and whistled through the chimney, and at last
there was such a terrible hubbub, that the little mouse let her
stick fall.

"That is a strange sort of soup," s