“Yes,” said Leo, listlessly, disappointed that he could not go to the ends of the earth by magic.

Paz noticed the disappointment, and said, by way of diversion, “Where do you like best to be?”

“At home I like the kitchen,” said Leo, with a little shrug.

“Good!  Come, then, to one of ours:  we can be back by the time Master Knops returns.”  So saying, he started off, and Leo followed.

Paz trotted down a winding staircase that made Leo feel as if he were a corkscrew, and in a little while ushered him into a place where jets of gas gave a garden-like effect, sprouting as they did from solid rock in the form of tulips and tiger-lilies, but over each was a wire netting, and from the netting were suspended shining little copper kettles and pans of all sorts and shapes.

Busily bending over these was a regiment of cooks, but instead of paper caps on their heads, each wore a white bonnet of ludicrous form, which they could tip over so as to shield their faces from the heat.  It gave them a top-heavy appearance which was extremely funny.

In the centre of the kitchen was a long table, before which were seated a number of elves testing each compound to see if it were properly prepared, and examining the cooked dishes as they were brought in that all should be served rightly.

“I had an idea,” said Leo, “that elves and fairies lived on rose leaves and honey, and that you never had to have things cooked.”

“The truth is,” answered Paz, “we do both; it all depends on what are our employments, whether we are living in the wild wood or down in these caverns.  I would ask nothing better than to dine off honeysuckle and a bird’s egg, or fill my pockets with gooseberries; but I must adapt myself to circumstances, and while toiling here have to share the more solid food provided for us.”  As he said this he handed Leo a pudding of about three inches in the round, iced on the top.

Leo swallowed it down with such zest that Paz asked him to dispense with ceremony, and help himself to anything he saw.  The tasting-table was full of puffs and tarts, and in a twinkling Leo had eaten two or three dozen of them.  They were really so light and frothy that they were hardly equal to an ounce of lollypops such as an ordinary child could devour, but Paz cautioned him, telling him that the sweet was so concentrated he might have a headache.

While he was doing this, Leo watched with interest the bringing in of some squirrels and rabbits, skinned and ready to be roasted.  It took six elves to bear the weight of an ordinary meat dish on which these were; then they trussed and skewered them, and put them in small ovens.

“How do you kill your game?” asked Leo.

“We trap everything, and then have a mode of killing the creatures which is entirely painless.”

By this time Knops would have returned, so Paz hurried Leo off, not, however, without first filling his pockets with goodies.  Up they clambered, until it seemed as if they might reach the stars by going a little farther, and now Leo was really so tired that when he sank down on the feathery couch in the sea-shell corridor he was asleep before he could explain to Knops the cause of his absence.