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198 MOONFOLK.
can't stop to talk any longer; stand just where you are
until I come back."
So saying, the fairy godmother took a hasty pinch of
rose-pollen snuff, and went clicking down the great hall
in her red-heeled shoes, striking her staff
upon the stone
floor as she went, and casting quick, shaiy glances about
her upon every side. In this great hall stood at least a
dozen furnaces, each one surrounded by a crowd of little
swarthy gnomes, their faces streaming with perspiration,
and their eyes blood-shot and bleared from staring at
the blinding fires. Some of these gnomes worked a
machine which fed the furnaces with coals, some of them
shook the grates and urged up the fires, some of them
skimmed the boiling caldrons of liquid glass, and some
of them swung these caldrons off from the furnaces, and
ladled it into the moulds where the spectacle glasses
were formed. At the lower end of the hall were two
great folding doors opening into another hall, where the
glasses were ground, polished, and mounted, and
made
ready for sale.
Khoda was still looking about her, full of interest in
all she saw, when the fairy godmother came clicking
np the stone alley between the furnaces, with the master
workman, a funny little black-and-red fellow, about two
feet in height, walking a step behind her, and listening to
her last orders.
" Fifty gross of lovers' rose-tinted spectacles, and
the same number of true-blue ones for those American