By morning, however, Laura is fully restored to health. Lizzie escapes and runs home, but when the dying Laura eats the pulp and juice from her body, the taste repulses rather than satisfies her, and she undergoes a terrifying paroxysm. Lizzie is drenched with the juice and pulp, but consumes none of it. But when the merchants realise that she has no intent to eat the fruit, and only intends to pay in silver, they attack, trying to feed her their fruits by force. Carrying a silver penny, Lizzie goes down to the brook and is greeted warmly by the goblins, who invite her to dine. Lizzie resolves to buy some of the goblin fruit for Laura. Months pass, and Lizzie realises that Laura is wasting to death.
One day she remembers the saved seed and plants it, but nothing grows. As winter approaches, she withers and ages unnaturally, too weak to do her chores. Unable to buy more of the forbidden fruit, Laura sickens and pines for it. That evening, however, as she listens at the stream, Laura discovers to her horror that, although her sister still hears the goblins’ chants and cries, she cannot. The next day, as Laura and Lizzie go about their housework, Laura dreamily longs for the coming meeting with the goblins. The sisters go to sleep in their shared bed. Laura dismisses her sister’s worries, and plans to return the next night to get more fruits for herself and Lizzie. Strangely, no grass grows over Jeanie’s grave. At home, Laura tells her sister of the delights she indulged in, but Lizzie is “full of wise upbraidings,” reminding Laura of Jeanie, another girl who partook of the goblin fruits, and then died at the beginning of winter after a long and pathetic decline. Once finished, she returns home in an ecstatic trance, carrying one of the seeds. Laura gorges on the delicious fruit in a sort of bacchic frenzy. Longing for the goblin fruits but having no money, the impulsive Laura offers to pay a lock of her hair and “a tear more rare than pearl.”
On this evening, Laura, intrigued by their strangeness, lingers at the stream after her sister goes home. As the poem begins, the sisters hear the calls of the goblin merchants selling their fantastic fruits in the twilight. Although the sisters seem to be quite young, they live by themselves in a house, and draw water every evening from a stream.
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