The Piskey Purse Part 10

'Poor little Pool!' she said to herself at last. 'I expect it is feeling as wisht without its light as I was before my Ninnie-Dinnie came in the costan. 'Tis wrong to want to keep what will brighten something else. I don't s'pose even a little moor-pool can be happy and bear flowers on its bosom without sunbeams and light,' and she told the child to give back the Pool its own.

'I can't,' said Ninnie-Dinnie. 'Only you can do that. Lean on me,'

offering her tiny arm, 'and I'll help you to get the Pail to give the dear little Pool its sunbeams.'

Joan was greatly amused that a d.i.n.ky little maid like her, scarcely bigger than a large doll, could support a great helpless body like herself to walk across the floor; and she laughed, and, as she laughed, the Pool cried again in such a beseeching voice that she unwittingly put her hand on the child's shoulder, and immediately found herself at the door, with the Pail in her hand, before she knew!

'I give 'ee back your brightness, dear little Pool,' she said, 'and much obliged I am to 'ee for letting me have it here in my little room. Now go along home to where you belong, amongst the griglans.' [33] And the little Pool took its shine and left, twisting and twirling its way back to its place, shining and rippling as it went.

'The pool will shine all the more brightly to-morrow for having given you its sunbeams,' said the child, as she helped Joan back to her chair.

A few days after Ninnie-Dinnie had brought the pailful of sunbeams, she again asked to go with Tom over the moors, and Tom willingly took her.

'What impossible thing is Mammie Trebisken going to ask you to bring back to-day?' said the miner in joke as the child went to the dresser for the Pail.

'The only thing I should like to have brought home to me to-day is that nasty little Skavarnak which frightened my Ninnie-Dinnie,' said Joan. 'If she do catch un an' bring un home in the Pail, I won't be willing to let him get out of it again in a hurry!'

'Do you really want the Little Long-Eared?' asked the child, with a curious look in her eyes.

'Of course I do. I s'pose he won't be so easy to get into the Pail as the lark's music or the pool's sunbeams.'

'Not nearly so easy,' responded Ninnie-Dinnie. 'And even if I can get him into the Pail, you won't like to keep him, and you must until----'

She did not finish what she was going to say, as Tom was in a hurry to be off, and they left the invalid greatly wondering whatever the little maid could mean.

The sun was rising when Tom and his little foster-child reached a part of the great moor where a road turned towards Ding Dong, and where they saw a hare sitting on his haunches cleaning his whiskers.

'There is Mister Long-Eared,' whispered Tom. 'Now is your chance to catch him, my dear;' but the hare had heard the whisper, and he vanished under the bracken.

'He will be very difficult to get into the Pail,' sighed Ninnie-Dinnie. 'But he will have to go into it, or the spell won't be broken.'

'What spell?' asked the miner.

'What! have you forgotten the rhyme the d.i.n.ky woman sang when she brought me to Mammie Trevisken--

'By magic and Pail, And the Skavarnak's wail'?

'I had clean forgotten,' said Tom. 'But I don't s'pose it meant anything. P'r'aps the little body in the bal-bonnet didn't know what she was singing.'

The miner went on his way to Ding Dong, and Ninnie-Dinnie seated herself on a bed of wild thyme close to where the hare had disappeared, and began calling very gently, but with great persistence:

'Skavarnak! Skavarnak! come into the Magic Pail! Long-Eared! Long-Eared! come into my Pail!'

But nothing stirred in the bracken.

Long the child called--hours it seemed--until at last there was a movement under the great fronds of bracken, and out came a woebegone little hare and went into the Pail!

'You are caught by the magic of the Old Men's Pail at last,' said Ninnie-Dinnie, with a strange look in her eye; and covering the Pail with her pinafore, she set her face homeward.

'Have 'ee got the hare?' was Joan's greeting, as the child appeared in the doorway.

'I have,' she cried, with a ring of triumph in her voice.

'Aw, you poor little thing!' exclaimed Joan, eyeing the hare, who was gazing at her from over the Pail with a most dejected look in his dark eyes.

'Please don't pity him,' said Ninnie-Dinnie. 'He isn't really a hare: he is a dreadful little hobgoblin who has been cruel to all the dear Little People you love so much.'

'Who told 'ee all that, cheeld?' asked Joan, looking at the little maid.

'P'r'aps the Wee Folk whispered it to me as I lay asleep in the costan,' answered the child.

When evening came, a most terrible wail came from the dresser, like the cry of a hurt child or an animal caught in a gin, which found its way at once to Joan's feeling heart.

'I can't a-bear to hear that cry,' she said to Ninnie-Dinnie. 'Do set the poor little creature free, that's a dear.'

'I can't, Mammie Trebisken, and I don't think I want you to, either. It is good for him to be kept prisoner in the Magic Pail.'

The hare wailed on, and poor Joan had to put her fingers in her ears to shut out the sound.

Tom came home just then, and, seeing there was a nice fat hare in the Pail, said he would soon stop his music, and that he would have him put into a hoggan for his dinner--a threat which so frightened the poor creature that there was no wail left in him for all that evening, and, leaning his head on the edge of the Pail, he looked exceedingly miserable, as I am sure he was.

The hare was kept prisoner in the Pail all that night and all the next day, and not even Joan gave him a look of pity, for even her heart was hardened against him.

When evening came again, he once more lifted up his voice in a loud and prolonged howl, which was almost more than the tender-hearted woman could bear, and she was about to ask Ninnie-Dinnie to give him his liberty, when a soft scamper of tiny feet made her turn her gaze to the open door, and in a minute or less there appeared on the step three small hares, who, when they saw her pitiful glance on them, began to cry:

'Give us back our Daddy Skavarnak! Give us back our Daddy Long-Ears!'

'Hearken to that,' cried Joan, turning to Ninnie-Dinnie, who was preparing Tom's supper. 'I wonder you, of all people, can bear to hear it. Do 'ee give the little Skavarnaks their poor daddy.'

'You know I haven't the power,' said the little maid quietly, 'and I am afraid I shouldn't be very willing if I had.'

'But you wanted me to give the lark his music and his song and the pool its beams,' remonstrated Joan, as Ninnie-Dinnie shook her head. 'Why ever don't 'ee want the hare to be given back to his children?'

'I told you the Long-Eared had been very cruel to the dear Wee Folk. He was terribly cruel to one poor Little Skillywidden [34] in particular, and its mammie, to save it from further cruelty, had to hide it somewhere until he was caught in the Magic Pail. You see,' as Joan lifted up her pain-twisted hands in amazement, 'when he was taken prisoner by the Pail and brought into a good woman's cottage he became powerless to do the dear Little People any more harm, and all the spells that he threw over them became weak as money-spiders' threads.'

'What a wicked little creature he must have been!' cried Joan indignantly, shaking her head at the hare, who looked thoroughly ashamed of himself, and lolled his head over the edge of the Pail. 'But who told 'ee about the wicked Skavarnak an' his doings?' turning to the child, and giving her a searching look.

Ninnie-Dinnie did not answer, but a peculiar look came into her eyes and a smile played about her lips.

'I'm beginning to think our Ninnie-Dinnie is one of the Wee Folk her own self,' said Joan to herself, still gazing at the quaint little figure, with its dark, unfathomable eyes, and its elfin locks framing the gentle little face, 'an' that she is the Skillywidden its mammie hid for safety in a cottage. She is a dear little soul, whoever she is, an' I wouldn't part with her now--no, not for a bal full o' diamonds.'

As these thoughts travelled through her mind, the three little hares on the doorstep wailed out their entreaty again: 'Give us back our Daddy Skavarnak! Give us back our Daddy Long-Ears!' and the hare in the Magic Pail lifted his head and looked beseechingly at the child, who, however, took no notice of him.

The three little hares continued to cry on, and although it worried Joan's kind heart to hear it, she steeled herself against them on account of their daddy's cruelty, but into Ninnie-Dinnie's eyes there stole a wondrous pity.

'Poor little things!' she whispered to herself; and then, looking up at her foster-mother, she said softly: 'You may let the Long-Eared free if you like.'

'But I don't like,' said Joan severely. 'Why should I, when he have a-been so unkind to the dear Little People?'