Free The Book of Dragons by E. Nesbit Page A

beautiful, too.
    Jane said so, but George said, “Oh, don’t bother; I’m thinking how to get on to the Pole and try the compass without waking the brute.”
    The dragon certainly was beautiful, with his deep, clear Prussian-blueness, and his rainbow-colored glitter. And rising from within the cold coil of the frozen dragon the North Pole shot up like a pillar made of one great diamond, and every now and then it cracked a little, from sheer coldness. The sound of the cracking was the only thing that broke the great white silence in the midst of which the dragon lay like an enormous jewel, and the straight flames went up all round him like the stalks of tall lilies.

    Sure enough, it
was
a dragon
    And as the children stood there looking at the most wonderful sight their eyes had ever seen, there was a soft padding of feet and a hurry-scurry behind them, and from the outside darkness beyond the flame-stalks came a crowd of little brown creatures running, jumping, scrambling, tumbling head over heels, and on all fours, and some even walking on their heads. They caught hands as they came near the fires, and danced round in a ring.
    “It’s bears,” said Jane; “I know it is. Oh, how I wish we hadn’t come; and my boots are so wet.”
    The dancing-ring broke up suddenly, and the next moment hundreds of furry arms clutched at George and Jane, and they found themselves in the middle of a giant, soft, heaving crowd of little fat people in brown fur dresses, and the white silence was quite gone.
    “Bears, indeed,” cried a shrill voice; “you’ll wish we
were
bears before you’ve done with us.”
    This sounded so dreadful that Jane began to cry. Up to now the children had only seen the most beautiful and wondrous things, but now they began to be sorry they had done what they were told not to, and the difference between “lawn” and “grass” did not seem so great as it had done at Forest Hill.
    Directly Jane began to cry, all the brown people started back. No one cries in the Arctic regions for fear of being struck so by the frost. So that these people had never seen anyone cry before.
    “Don’t cry
really,”
whispered George, “or you’ll get chilblains in your eyes. But
pretend
to howl—it frightens them.”
    So Jane went on pretending to howl, and the real crying stopped: it always does when you begin to pretend. You try it.
    Then, speaking very loud so as to be heard over the howls of Jane, George said: “Yah—who’s afraid? We are George and Jane—who are you?”
    “We are the sealskin dwarfs,” said the brown people, twisting their furry bodies in and out of the crowd like the changing glass in kaleidoscopes; “we are very precious and expensive, for we are made, throughout, of the very best sealskin.”
    “And what are those fires for?” bellowed George—for Jane was crying louder and louder.
    “Those,” shouted the dwarfs, coming a step nearer, “are the fires we make to thaw the dragon. He is frozen now—so he sleeps curled up round the Pole—but when we have thawed him with our fires he will wake up and go and eat everybody in the world except us.”
    “Whatever—do—you—want—him—to—do—that—for?” yelled George.
    “Oh—just for spite,” bawled the dwarfs, carelessly—as if they were saying “Just for fun.”
    Jane left off crying to say: “You
are
heartless.”
    “No, we aren’t,” they said; “our hearts are made of the finest sealskin, just like little fat sealskin purses—”
    And they all came a step nearer. They were very fat and round. Their bodies were like sealskin jackets on a very stout person; their heads were like sealskin muffs; their legs were like sealskin boas; and their hands and feet were like sealskin tobacco-pouches. And their faces were like seals’ faces, inasmuch as they, too, were covered with sealskin.
    “Thank you so much for telling us,” said George. “Good evening. (Keep on howling, Jane!)”
    But the dwarfs came a step nearer,