aying with an old woman." Then
he, knowing that she wanted to be alone, would pick up his goat and
hurry away.

He had had a dear little sister, called Apple-blossom, but a strange
thing had happened to her. One day she over-wound her very big doll
that talked and walked, and the consequence was quite terrible. No
sooner was the winding-up key out of the doll's side than it blinked
its eyes, talked very fast, made faces, took Apple-blossom by the hand,
saying, "I am not your doll any longer, but you are my little girl,"
and led her right away no one could tell whither, and no one was able
to follow. The tall aunt and Willie only knew that she had gone to be
the doll's little girl in some strange place, where dolls were stronger
and more important than human beings.

After Apple-blossom left him, Willie had only his goat to play with; it
was a poor little thing with no horns, no tail and hardly any hair, but
still he loved it dearly, and put it under his arm every morning while
he went along the street.

"It is only made of painted wood and a little hair, Master Willie,"
said the blacksmith's wife one day. "Why should you care for it; it is
not even alive."

"But if it were alive, anyone could love it."

"And living hands made it," the miller's wife said. "I wonder what
strange hands they were;--take care of it for the sake of them, little
master."

"Yes, dame, I will," he answered gratefully, and he went on his way
thinking of the hands, wondering what tasks had been set them to do
since they fashioned the little goat. He stayed all day in the woods
helping the children to gather nuts and blackberries. In the afternoon
he watched them go home with their aprons full; he looked after them
longingly as they went on their way singing. If he had had a father and
mother, or brothers and sisters, to whom he could have carried home
nuts and blackberries, how merry he would have been. Sometimes he told
the children how happy they were to live in a cottage with the door
open all day, and the sweet breeze blowing in, and the cocks and hens
strutting about outside, and the pigs grunting in the styes at the end
of the garden; to see the mother scrubbing and washing, to know that
the father was working in the fields, and to run about and help and
play, and be cuffed and kissed, just as it happened. Then they would
answer, "But you have the tall lady for your aunt, and the big house to
live in, and the grand carriage to drive