'There! that'll do for them.

They can't bear singing, and they can't stand that song.

They can't sing themselves, for they have no more voice than a crow; and they don't like other people to sing.' The boy was dressed in a miner's dress, with a curious cap on his head.
He was a very nice-looking boy, with eyes as dark as the mines in which he worked and as sparkling as the crystals in their rocks.

He was about twelve years old.

His face was almost too pale for beauty, which came of his being so little in the open air and the sunlight--for even vegetables grown in the dark are white; but he looked happy, merry indeed--perhaps at the thought of having routed the goblins; and his bearing as he stood before them had nothing clownish or rude about it.
'I saw them,' he went on, 'as I came up; and I'm very glad I did.