‘Such a pity they grow up,’ she said. She was in her seven hundred and twentieth year, so naturally she had exhausted a good many human babies.

‘And what is he to be called, Madam?’ asked the nurse.

Tiphaine considered. ‘It’s quite six decades since we had a Tiffany,’ she said. ‘Let him be named Tiffany. And see to the seven weasels.’

Elfhame is in Heathendom. It has no christenings. But when a human child is brought into it there is a week of ceremonies. Every day a fasting weasel bites the child’s neck and drinks its blood for three minutes. The amount of blood drunk by each successive weasel (who is weighed before and after the drinking) is replaced by the same weight of a distillation of dew, soot, and aconite. Though the blood-to-ichor transfer does not cancel human nature (the distillation is only approximate: elfin blood contains several unanalyzable components, one of which is believed to be magnetic air), it gives considerable longevity; up to a hundred and fifty years is the usual span. During the seven days, the child may suffer some sharpish colics, but few die. On the eighth day it is judged sufficiently inhumanized to be given its new name.

‘Dear little thing,’ said Tiphaine. ‘I hope he won’t age prematurely.’ For when grey hairs appear on the head of a changeling he is put out of the hill to make the rest of his way through the human world; which is why we see so many grey-haired beggars on the roads.

Mrs Tod, the baker’s wife, did not notice the difference between her baby which had been stolen away and the elf-baby left in its stead. She was busy making sausage meat and pork pies that day; and this was not her first child, to be studied like a nonpareil39. Indeed, it was her ninth, though not all of them had lived. It was Ailie, the servant, who noticed that the baby had lost flesh all of a sudden.

‘Well, if you won’t, you won’t,’ said Mrs Tod, putting it from her breast. ‘I can’t wait all day for you. There’s the paste to raise and the master’s supper to get. Here, Ailie! Give it the milk rag.’

Ailie washed out the rag, dipped it in milk, and offered it to the baby. It would not take it, and looked at her with staring green eyes. This put it into her head to lay it among the cat’s kittens. The baby sucked the cat, who purred and laid her paw over it. So it went on for three days, the baby refusing Mrs Tod’s breast and Ailie pretending it took the milk rag—for she did not care to speak of the cat. On the fourth day Mrs Tod said to her husband, ‘We’ll lose this Adam like we did the other. It must be christened before it slips away.’