bout Rumpty-Dudget you will have guessed
that this grey dwarf was none other than he, and that although he
grinned so broadly from one ear to the other he wished in reality to
do the three children harm; and even (if he could manage it) to carry
one of them off to his tower, to stand in the hundred-and-first
corner, with his face to the wall and his hands behind his back. But
Rumpty-Dudget had no power to do this so long as the children stayed
on their side of the prickly hedge; he must first tempt them to creep
through the opening, and then, when they were upon his own grounds, he
could do with them what he pleased. Now, the children had often been
warned not to creep through the hedge, both by their Queen-mother,
before she went away, and by their Fairy Aunt in dreams, and by Tom
the Cat in the daytime; and as they had never had reason to suppose
that there was anything prettier on the other side of the hedge than
on their own, they had never thought of going thither. Rumpty-Dudget
knew this; and as he was even more cunning than he was ugly he had
made up his mind to profit by it.

'My dear young people,' he said, holding out his hands, 'I am very
glad to meet you. It has grieved me to see you all playing here on
this ugly lawn, when there is a garden so much more beautiful just on
the other side of the hedge. I am very fond of children, and I make it
my business to amuse them. If you will just give yourselves the
trouble to step through that opening in the hedge you shall see
something that you never saw before.'

The three children thought this sounded very pleasant; but, after a
pause, Princess Hilda, who generally took the lead, said:

'We were told not to go on the other side of the hedge.'

'Who could have been so unkind as to tell you that?' cried
Rumpty-Dudget, as if he was very much shocked. 'Besides, one side of
the hedge is just the same as another; and if it is wrong to go on the
other side, how much more wrong it must be to stay on this!'

Hilda thought awhile before answering, for what Rumpty-Dudget had said
certainly sounded reasonable. 'But why,' she asked at last, 'should
there be any hedge at all?'

'It is all on account of the hole through it,' the dwarf replied, with
his most charming grin. 'There could have been no hole, you see, if
there hadn't been a hedge; and that is why the hedge was planted.'

Princess Hilda could not deny that this was true; and, moreover, since
she had begun to tal