So the next day Thomas had a pasty as big as any man jack of them, and he put it in his bag, and trudged up the hill to the mine.
The work was as hard as ever, and he was just as hungry and miserable when at last it was croust time, and he sat on the end of the bench and unwrapped his pasty.
He was just about to take a bite, when he heard again, “Not so fast! Not so hasty! give us a bite of that there pasty! We be mortal hungry! We be a-dying down here!” and blow me! There at his side, and no higher than the top of his knees, were two little fellows, all kitted out as miners, and looking so pined and hungry he couldn’t help but feel sorry for them.
So he held out the pasty to them, but he said, “Just one bite each, mind. There has to be something for me!”
And snip, snap, right away the two little fellows took two tremendous bites, and the pasty was gone right down to the dry hard crust!
“Hey!” cried Thomas.
“He’ll be wanting a wish, now,” said the little fellows to each other. “What’ll it be, Thomas?”
Thomas thought how he hated the dark. “I’m feared of the blackness down here,” he said. “I wish I could see the daylight.”
“Come come come,” they said, and tugging at his shirt and trousers they dragged him away from the others, through a mazy twisty path of passageways, till they got him to a place where there was a pale disc of light on the floor, and a dusty beam standing up from it.
“Lookey up, lookey up!” they cried, and Thomas looked up, and he saw very far above him, at the top of a towering shaft, a round blue platter made of sky. It wasn’t what he wanted at all, but he’d had his wish in a way, so that was that.
“How was the pasty?” Birdy asked him as he trudged home past her door that evening.
“It was good, but there wasn’t enough,” he told her. He was fair gnawing his knuckles for hunger.
“I’ll make you a bigger one tomorrow,” Birdy promised him.
