and danced around in a ring.

"It's bears," said Jane. "I know it is. Oh, how I wish we hadn't come;
and my boots are so wet."

The dancing-ring broke up suddenly, and the next moment hundreds of
furry arms clutched at George and Jane, and they found themselves in the
middle of a great, soft, heaving crowd of little fat people in brown fur
dresses, and the white silence was quite gone.

"Bears, indeed," cried a shrill voice. "You'll wish we were bears before
you've done with us."

This sounded so dreadful that Jane began to cry. Up to now the children
had only seen the most beautiful and wondrous things, but now they began
to be sorry they had done what they were told not to, and the difference
between "lawn" and "grass" did not seem so great as it had at Forest
Hill.

Directly Jane began to cry, all the brown people started back. No one
cries in the Arctic regions for fear of being struck by the frost. So
that these people had never seen anyone cry before.

"Don't cry for real," whispered George, "or you'll get chilblains in
your eyes. But pretend to howl--it frightens them."

So Jane went on pretending to howl, and the real crying stopped: It
always does when you begin to pretend. You try it.

Then, speaking very loud so as to be heard over the howls of Jane,
George said: "Yah--who's afraid? We are George and Jane--who are you?"

"We are the sealskin dwarfs," said the brown people, twisting their
furry bodies in and out of the crowd like the changing glass in
kaleidoscopes. "We are very precious and expensive, for we are made,
throughout, of the very best sealskin."

"And what are those fires for?" bellowed George--for Jane was crying
louder and louder.

"Those," shouted the dwarfs, coming a step nearer, "are the fires we
make to thaw the dragon. He is frozen now--so he sleeps curled up around
the Pole--but when we have thawed him with our fires he will wake up and
go and eat everybody in the world except us."

"WHATEVER--DO--YOU--WANT--HIM--TO--DO--THAT--FOR?" yelled George.

"Oh--just for spite," bawled the dwarfs carelessly--as if they were
saying, "Just for fun."

Jane stopped crying to say: "You are heartless."

"No, we aren't," they said. "Our hearts are made of the finest sealskin,
just like little fat sealskin purses--"

And they all came a step nearer. They were very fat and round. Their
bodies were like sealskin jackets on a very stout person; their heads
were like sealskin muffs; their l