Atondido Stories
Klaas had not time to look hard at the fairies, for he was too full
of the fun. He danced and danced, all night and until the sky in
the east began to turn, first gray and then rosy. Then he tumbled
down, tired out, and fell asleep. His head lay on the inner curve
of the fairy ring, with his feet in the centre.
Klaas felt very happy, for he had no sense of being tired, and
he did not know he was asleep. He thought his fairy partners,
who had danced with him, were now waiting on him to bring
him cheeses. With a golden knife, they sliced them off and fed
him out of their own hands. How good it tasted! He thought
now he could, and would, eat all the cheese he had longed for all
his life. There was no mother to scold him, or daddy to shake his
finger at him. How delightful!
But by and by, he wanted to stop eating and rest a while. His
jaws were tired. His stomach seemed to be loaded with cannon-
balls. He gasped for breath.
But the fairies would not let him stop, for Dutch fairies never
get tired. Flying out of the sky—from the north, south, east and
west—they came, bringing cheeses. These they dropped down
around him, until the piles of the round masses threatened first
to enclose him as with a wall, and then to overtop him. There
were the red balls from Edam, the pink and yellow spheres from
Gouda, and the gray loaf-shaped ones from Leyden. Down
through the vista of sand, in the pine woods, he looked, and oh,
horrors! There were the tallest and strongest of the fairies rolling
along the huge, round, flat cheeses from Friesland! Any one of
these was as big as a cart wheel, and would feed a regiment. The
fairies trundled the heavy discs along, as if they were playing
with hoops. They shouted hilariously, as, with a pine stick, they
beat them forward like boys at play. Farm cheese, factory cheese,
Alkmaar cheese, and, to crown all, cheese from Limburg—which
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