“Yes, I promise; and here is my hand!” said Dino, giving the little girl a hearty handshake. “You can see that I really mean it, for what one has promised that way, one can never take back. Now you can be sure that I shall always be your friend.”
Cornelli’s face lit up with joy. It was obviously a great comfort to her to have a friend who would remain so for all time.
“So now, I’ll tell you what it is. But you must promise not to tell anyone in the whole, wide world about it, as long as you live.”
Dino promised, giving his hand again for solemn assurance.
“Look, here on both sides of my forehead,” said Cornelli now, hesitating a little and pushing the fringes of hair out of her face, “I have two large bumps, they grow all the time and especially when I frown. I have to make a cross face all the time, for I cannot be jolly any more and can never laugh again. So the bumps keep on growing and in the end they will be just like regular horns. Then everyone will hate me, for nobody else has horns. I can do nothing now but hide them, but in the end they will come through and then my hair won’t hide them any more. Then everybody can see it and people will despise me and children will be sure to throw stones after me. Oh!”
Cornelli again put her head on her arms and groaned in her great trouble. Dino had listened, full of astonishment. He had never before heard anything like that.
“But, Cornelli,” he said, “why do you frown all the time, if the bumps grow when you do it? It would be so much better if you would think of funny things and would try to laugh. If you always made a pleasant face they would perhaps go away entirely.”
“I can’t! I can’t possibly do it,” Cornelli lamented. “I know that I make a horrid face and that I am so ugly that nobody wants to look at me. Whenever anybody looks at me I have to make a cross face, for I know that everybody thinks how horrid I look. I never can be happy any more, because I have to think all the time about that terrible thing on my head, and that it is getting worse. And I can’t help it and can do nothing. You don’t know how it is. As long as I live I have to be that way, and everybody will hate me. You could not laugh any more, either, if you were like that.”
“You should try to think of quite different things and then you would forget it. Later on it would probably seem quite different to you. You keep on thinking about it all the time and so you believe in it more and more. Get it out of your head, then it will be sure to get better,” said Dino, who could not quite understand it. “Come, I’ll tell you a story that will change your thoughts. Once upon a time there was an old copper pan—See, you have laughed already!”
“Oh, that will be a fine kind of story—about an old copper pan!” Cornelli said.
“It certainly is a fine story,” Dino assured her; “just listen: She had a stepbrother who was a wash boiler—you see, you have laughed again! That’s the way! So they went together to Paris, where there was a revolution.”
“What is a revolution?” Cornelli asked, quite thrilled.
“See how the story interests you!” said Dino, thoroughly pleased. “You have no more wrinkles on your forehead, because you are listening well. Didn’t I guess what you have to do? I’ll go on now. You call it a revolution when nobody wants to remain in their old places and everything goes to pieces.”
“What do you mean by going to pieces? Do you mean it the way chairs begin to go to pieces when the glue comes off and the legs get loose and shaky?”
“Just that way,” Dino assented. “When all laws and orders begin to go to pieces like chairs, when the glue is off and everything crashes and tumbles down; do you understand?”
“Yes. And what happened?” Cornelli wanted to know.
“The travellers liked that well,” Dino continued, “for they were full of discontented thoughts. The copper pan had thought for a long time that she wanted to be something else. She was tired of cooking greasy food and of all the time being full of soot at the bottom; she wanted to be something better. The wash boiler had similar thoughts. He thought he would be much better off as a nice tea kettle. He thought how nice it would be to stand on a fine table, so he wanted to get away from the laundry.
“When they came to the revolution they joined in it, too. They became quite famous making speeches, for they both could talk very well. The wash boiler had learned it from the washer women, and the copper pan from the cook. So they were both asked what they wanted to become. The copper pan wanted to become an ice box; she wanted to sparkle outside with fine wood and inside with splendid ice. The wash boiler wanted to become a fine tea kettle and be able to stand on a finely laid-out table. So they both became what they had wished.
“But the copper pan, who had been used to the cosy fire, began to shake and freeze when the ice filled her whole inside. Her teeth were chattering while she looked about to see if she could discover a little fire anywhere. But nobody ever brought any burning spark near her. She suffered the bitterest hunger besides, because she had been used to quite different nourishment from fat morsels roasting in her insides. Now she had to swallow little lumps of ice and nothing else. She was
