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Updated: June 25, 2025
"Here is a find!" cried he, and he bent down over the little shoes with round eyes. There they were, and they said nothing about how they had come there, but lay sadly on their sides, as silent as could be. "I shall certainly take them home to my fine house," said Wee-Wun the gnome, "for they must be lonely lying here.
But the Hop-about Man did not notice him at all, and when Wee-Wun cried out to the little blue shoes: "See how hard I am working," they were quite silent. And you do not know how silent blue shoes can be. The Hop-about Man was falling asleep in his chair when all was finished, and Wee-Wun again shed tears. "Oh, Hop-about Man," he cried, "are you never going away?"
And so it was, but far, far larger than any Wee-Wun had ever seen in his life before. And it had grown so high and as big as that in just one night. "What will it be like to-morrow?" thought Wee-Wun, and he began to weep again.
So Wee-Wun had to make another platterful, and alack, he was careless, and let that porridge burn, and he could not eat it, though he tried hard. Afterwards he went out to fetch wood for his fire, and when he had fetched it, he threw it into a corner, and he left the door wide open, so that a draught fell upon the Hop-about Man. But the Hop-about Man said nothing.
When he saw Wee-Wun come along, with tears still on his cheeks and shaking in his shoes, he said: "My little gnome, you had better keep away, lest I plant you in mistake for a pea." But Wee-Wun said: "Oh, dear Green Ogre, wouldn't you like a nice blue blow-away for your garden? I have one which is quite big enough for you; it is taller than my little house.
To live in the Bye-bye Meadow was sometimes a dangerous thing, for all the big people lived there. Wee-Wun might have lived on the other common with the other gnomes and fairies if he had liked; but he did not. He liked better to be among the big people on the Bye-bye Meadow.
"There, that was managed very easily," said Wee-Wun the gnome joyously to himself, and he looked at the hole where the blue blow-away had been, and laughed. Then he went into his fine home, but that was no longer empty, for in the seat by the fireside sat a little man in a blue smock and feather cap. And he looked quite happy and at home.
But the very next day after Wee-Wun had passed, when she came into her garden to gather every twentieth dandelion she could hardly see a dandelion because of the blow-aways that were growing everywhere, and casting their fluff into the dandelions' eyes. When the Stir-about Wife saw this mournful sight she wept, because her beautiful spell, which she was about to finish, was quite spoiled.
And perhaps if he had not been such a careless fellow he might not have got into so much trouble there; but he was as careless as he could be. One day Wee-Wun was flying across the Bye-bye Meadow, with his cap at the back of his head, and his pockets full of blue blow-away seeds, when he saw lying upon the ground two little shoes of blue and silver, with upturned toes.
And the little man replied at once: "I am the Hop-about Man, and since you have let the Green Ogre carry away the blue blow-away in which I lived, I have come to live with you." "But my fine house is not big enough to hold two people," cried Wee-Wun, and he was in a way. "It is big enough to hold twelve tigers," said the Hop-about Man, "so it can easily hold two little gnomes.
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