Page:Stories from Hans Andersen with illustrations by Edmund Dulac.djvu/134

 'There is a shocking draught here,' said the Prince, as he sat down on the ground.

'It will be worse than this when my sons come home!' said the woman. 'You are in the cavern of the winds; my sons are the four winds of the world! Do you understand?'

'Who are your sons?' asked the Prince.

'Well that's not so easy to answer when the question is stupidly put,' said the woman. 'My sons do as they like; they are playing rounders now with the clouds up there in the great hall,' and she pointed up into the sky.

'Oh indeed!' said the Prince. 'You seem to speak, very harshly, and you are not so gentle as the women I generally see about me!'

'Oh, I daresay they have nothing else to do! I have to be harsh if I am to keep my boys under control! But I can do it, although they are a stiff-necked lot! Do you see those four sacks hanging on the wall? They are just as frightened of them as you used to be of the cane behind the looking-glass. I can double the boys up, I can tell you, and then they have to go into the bag; we don't stand upon ceremony, and there they have to stay; they can't get out to play their tricks till it suits me to let them. But here we have one of them.' It was the Northwind who came in with an icy blast; great hailstones peppered about the floor and snowflakes drifted in. He was dressed in bearskin trousers and jacket, 120