ONCE upon a time there was a little girl. Her name was Merrimeg. Sometimes she was good, and sometimes she was naughty. But she was always merry.
One morning her mother gave her a little broom and told her to sweep the kitchen floor and her mother said, “Now, Merrimeg, be sure to sweep all the dust neatly into the dustpan, and carry it out to the cabbage garden. Will you do that?”
“Yes, mother,” said Merrimeg.
“Don’t sweep any dust into the corners,” said her mother; and she left Merrimeg in the kitchen, and went into the front room to make the beds.
Merrimeg swept and swept with her little[4] broom, and she made up a little song and sang it out loud, keeping time with the broom.
Every little while her mother would call to her from the next room and say,——
“Have you finished yet, Merrimeg?”
“Not yet, mother!” Merrimeg would say, and then she would go on with her sweeping and singing.
She was very happy, but this wasn’t her day to be good; for she was in a great hurry to be out in the garden in the sunshine, and she forgot all about what her mother had said to her; so instead of wasting time on the dustpan, she swept all the dust into the nice clean fireplace, a very large fireplace, big enough to roast a pig in. An iron pot was hanging there, but there wasn’t any fire, and her mother had just cleaned off the hearth so that it was as spotless as new brick.
She swept the dust from under the table and chairs, and out of the corners, and everywhere. And every single bit of the dust she swept into the fireplace, and piled it up at the back on[5] the clean bricks, out of sight. And all the while she kept on singing.
 
She was stooping down into the fireplace, with her head right at the back, under the chimney, when her mother called to her from the next room and said,——
“Have you finished now, Merrimeg?”
“Yes, mother!” said Merrimeg. “I’m going out into the garden now!”
But she didn’t go out into the garden. Instead of that,—just as she said, “I’m going out[6] into the garden now,” whack! she was knocked against the iron pot, and bang! she was tossed against the back of the fireplace, and whoof! she was whirled up into that black dirty chimney like a leaf in a wind.
And it was a wind, too! She was sucked up in a wind that was rushing up the chimney,—and such a wind! Never had she been caught in a wind like that, not even in the wildest March weather. Before she knew it, she was high up inside the chimney in the pitch dark, stuck fast, and the wind began to die down.
“Mother!” she cried, at the top of her voice. But her mother couldn’t hear her; and all that Merrimeg heard was a sound as if a great many people were laughing at her, a long way off.
It was pitch dark. But all around her, in the black soot of the chimney, were little sparks, like the sparks you see in the soot at the back of the fireplace when the fire is crackling on the hearth,—thousands of tiny sparks, and all of them getting dimmer as the wind died down more and more.
[7]Suddenly the wind sprang up again, stronger and stronger, and the harder the wind blew the brighter the sparks burned. Merrimeg had to hold on fast with her feet and back to keep from being blown out of the top of the chimney.
She could see better now, and she saw what these sparks were. There were thousands of little black imps, sitting along the edges of the bricks in the walls of the chimney; and each spark was the head of a little black imp. She had to look close to see them, they were so tiny, but there they were, sure enough. She could hear them laughing, and it sounded as if a great crowd of grown-up people were laughing fit to kill, a long, long way off.
Every one of them was holding in his hands a wee mite of a bag with two handles, and when he would press these handles together a strong wind would come out of the bag and blow on his head, and make it burn bright like a spark of fire; and when he stopped pressing the handles of his wind bag his head would grow dim again. They were working away at a great rate, keeping their[8] heads alive, and the wind they made nearly blew Merrimeg up out of the chimney.
She didn’t have much time to think about it, for all at once the imps stopped working at their wind bags, and the wind began to go down and their heads to grow dim, and before she knew what was coming Merrimeg felt these little imps, thousands of them, pounce on her, all over her, as thick as flies on honey, over her hair, and face, and arms, and legs, and dress, everywhere, and they were scratching and pinching, so that she screamed out in fright, and nearly fell down the chimney, for there was no wind now to hold her up.
But just then, when all the sparks had nearly gone out, the terrible little creatures suddenly stopped scratching and pinching and began to pump away at their wind bags like mad; for in another second their sparks would have been out, and that would have been the end of them.
That was what saved Merrimeg. The wind that sprang up from the wind bags was twice as[9] strong as it has been before. It caught her, and tore her loose, and picked her up, and whirled her up the chimney, right up to the top of it and out.
There she was, standing in the bright sunshine, on the roof of her own house, looking down into the cabbage garden.
It was a little house, only one story high, but it was too high for her to jump down to the ground; so she crawled to the edge of the roof, and sure enough there was the garden ladder standing against the front wall of the house, and it didn’t take her more than a minute to clamber down the ladder and run to the door.
She knocked on the door and waited for her mother to let her in.
The door opened, and her mother stood in the doorway looking at her. When she saw the little girl who was waiting on the step she raised both her hands in astonishment and opened her mouth wide.
“Oh, mother!” cried Merrimeg. “Let me in, quick! I’m terrible sorry, and I’ve been up the[10] chimney, and I’ll never, never do so any more, indeed I won’t!”
“Why, child,” said her mother, “who are you?”
“Let me in, mother!”
“Who are you, child?”
“Who am I? I’m Merrimeg, of course! Let me in!”
Her mother laughed. “Merrimeg!” she cried, and laughed louder than before. “You! The idea! You must be crazy! Why, child, you’re as black as ink! My Merrimeg is as fair as a lily! I never saw you before!”
“Oh, mother!” cried Merrimeg. “I’m not black. I’m Merrimeg, and I want to come in!”
“Run away, child,” said her mother. “I’ve no time to bother with strange children now. Run away home to your mother. I’m too busy to bother with you now.”
When she had said that, she went back into the house, and closed the door after her. Merrimeg knocked at the door again and again, but it was[11] no use. Her mother would not pay any attention.
She cried to herself and walked away down the village street. No one knew her. She stopped two or three times, when she met children whom she knew, but they laughed at her and mocked her. They called her “Black face! Black face!” and she ran away.
She came to the end of the village street and went into the woods. She sat down beside a pool of clear water, to rest. She looked down into the pool. She was black.
Her dress was black too. Wherever the imps had touched her (and they had touched her all over) she was as black as chimney soot. She lay down on the grass and cried.
Then she jumped up and stooped over the pool to wash her face in the clear water. She scrubbed her face hard, and looked at it again in the water; and then she cried again, harder than before. Her face was still black; it wouldn’t wash off!
She went on further into the woods, and she[12] really didn’t care what became of her; she wouldn’t care if she got lost and never came home any more; and if she never came home any more, oh! wouldn’t her mother be sorry! She stopped to cry for a few minutes, but she went on again pretty soon, and after a long, long while she found herself in a part of the woods where she had never been before.
She came to a place where there was a great bank of bright green moss under the trees. It was higher in the middle, something like a roof, and it was very soft and cool-looking, and Merrimeg was very tired.
She threw herself down on the bed of moss.
“How soft it is!” she said to herself.
As she said this, she sank down deep into the moss. Down she sank, deeper and deeper. She was frightened, and tried to jump up; but it was too late. The moss closed all over her, and she sank out of sight. She was gone.
Where do you think she was? She was in a little house under the ground. The moss was the roof of the house, and she fell right down[13] through it into a little kitchen, where two gnomes were sitting at a table eating their dinner. She sat down plump on the floor, and stared at the gnomes.
[14]
 
“BLESS MY SOUL!” SAID ONE OF THE GNOMES
 
[15]“Bless my soul!” said one of the gnomes.
“Bless my soul too, brother!” said the other gnome.
“I’ll tell you what it is, brother Nibby,” said the first gnome, “the roof’s broken in again.”
“I believe you’re right, brother Malkin, I believe you’re right,” said the other gnome.
“What’ll we do with her?” said the gnome called Malkin.
“Whatever you say, brother,” said the gnome called Nibby. “You always know best.”
“She’s all black,” said the first gnome.
“So she is, brother, so she is,” said the other gnome.
“But not quite all black,” said the first gnome.
“No, not quite,” said the other one. “How clever you are, brother Malkin.”
“I see a white place behind her ear,” said brother Malkin.
[16]“There’s a white place behind her ear, sure enough,” said brother Nibby. “I wouldn’t have noticed it myself.”
“Then why isn’t she white all over?” said brother Malkin.
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