Bright as gold can be!
Four, five, six -
Shovels, mattocks, picks!
Seven, eight, nine -
Light your lamp at mine.
Ten, eleven, twelve -
Loosely hold the helve.
We're the merry miner-boys,
Make the goblins hold their noise.'


'I wish YOU would hold your noise,' said the nurse rudely, for the
very word GOBLIN at such a time and in such a place made her
tremble. It would bring the goblins upon them to a certainty, she
thought, to defy them in that way. But whether the boy heard her
or not, he did not stop his singing.


'Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen -
This is worth the siftin';
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen -
There's the match, and lay't in.
Nineteen, twenty -
Goblins in a plenty.'


'Do be quiet,' cried the nurse, in a whispered shriek. But the
boy, who was now close at hand, still went on.

'Hush! scush! scurry!