The Piskey Purse Part 7

My d.i.n.ky, [19] my dear!

Till the day of that year When the spells shall be broken-- And this is the token-- By Magic and Pail And the Skavarnak's [20] wail, My ninnie, my dinnie, my little mudgeskerry!

'Then we to the carns will away, my pednpaley [21]

My deary, my tweet!

Where the Small People's feet Tread out the Birth measure, To give her a treasure From out of the blue, When she shall know too 'Tis better to give than to keep my pednpaley.'

The song and its music had hardly died away, when the tiny old woman spread her hands over the bramble-basket, as if in blessing, and then stole out of the cottage as noiselessly and mysteriously as she had come.

Joan was all of a tremble quite five minutes after she had gone, and when she had somewhat recovered herself, her glance fell on the costan. At first she was afraid what it contained; but her woman's curiosity got the better of her fears, and, bending over the rough basket, she turned over the bracken, laid in careful order on its top, and saw lying on a bed of dried moss and leaves something that brought a cry of amazement, mingled with horror, to her lips.

It was a babe, but so tiny and so ugly that she shuddered as she gazed upon it. It was in a deep sleep, or seemed to be, and its skinny little face, crinkled all over like a poppy just out of its sheath, was resting on its claw-like hand.

In all her dreams of a child coming to her home, Joan had never dreamt of anything so uncanny as this babe, and she told herself that the little creature in its costan cradle was sent to punish her for her persistent desire for a child.

Tom arrived just then, and soon knew all that his wife could tell of the mysterious coming and going of the little old woman in the bal-bonnet, and of her strange song; and, like Joan, when he looked into the bramble-basket and saw the bit of ugliness within, he gave voice to a cry of horror that anything so uncanny should be left on their hands. In fact, he was so angry that he wanted to take the basket and all it held on to the moor, and let her who brought it come and take it away, for have it in his house he would not--no, not for all the crocks of gold the Little People were said to have in their keeping.

The night was bitterly cold, and by little moans and sighs coming from the direction of the Hooting Carn Joan could tell the wind was about to rise, and would perhaps end in a great storm. And though she was so much upset at having such an ugly little creature thrust on them, she was too tender-hearted to wish it to be exposed even for an hour on their moor on such a night. Besides, the child was helpless, whosoever child it was, and therefore demanded compa.s.sion, and she begged her husband to allow it to stay in their house until to-morrow.

Tom could seldom refuse his crippled wife anything when her heart was set upon it, and, though much against his inclination, he yielded to her entreaties; but he was careful to add that he could only suffer it to stay until he was ready to start for the bal.

'Whatever the weather then, fair or foul, out it shall go on the moor!' he cried. 'It is a changeling,' he added, with a solemn shake of his head, 'and if we was to let it abide along o' we, we should have nothing but bad luck all the rest of our days.'

Joan, having got her way, did not care to contradict her husband; for she told herself the song the little old woman had sung pointed to something quite different. Still, she would not keep the babe longer than the morrow if he were against it.

When bedtime came, Tom and Joan had quite a dispute as to where the strange cradle and its stranger occupant should be put for the night, and as neither of them could decide, and Tom was against its being taken up into the bed-chamber, Joan declared she would sit up with it all night, and nothing Tom could say should prevent her. So he went off to his bed in a huff, muttering loudly that the cheeld, [22] or 'whatever it was,' had brought misery to them already.

Joan kept to her resolve, and sat in her armchair with the bramble-basket at her feet until well on towards the dawn, when Tom came down to see how she was faring, and found, to his surprise, she was as fresh as a rose just gathered.

'An' I ent sleepy nuther!' she cried in triumph. 'I ent felt so well since I was took with the rheumatics, and me hands don't look so twisted, do they?' holding them up. ''Tis my belief 'tis all owing to that little cheeld down there in the costan.'

As Tom could not gainsay this, he went off to do his morning's work, and to get Joan's breakfast. By the time he had done this the sun was rising, and the sky, away in the east, was a miracle of purple and rose. The night had been wild, but the storm having exhausted itself, the dawn was all the more beautiful.

The babe was still asleep, and had not moved all night, Joan said, and Tom fervently hoped it would not until it was safe out on the moor. But he hoped in vain, for when the sun began to wheel up behind the hills in the east, and sent a beam of rosy light in at the cas.e.m.e.nt window, the little creature shuffled in the costan, and when Joan, willing to give it air, pushed back its covering of bracken, it opened its eyes and smiled, and that smile transformed its whole face.

'Why, Tom, my man,' she cried, 'the little dear isn't ugly one bit; an' the little eyes of it are as soft as moor-pools! Do 'ee come and have a squint at it.'

Tom came, and when he had stared at the babe a minute or more, he said slowly, as if weighing his words:

'You be right, Joan; but it do make the mystery all the more queer. A cheeld that can look as ugly as nettles one minute and as pretty as flowers the next ent for we to keep.'

'Don't 'ee betray thy ignorance where babes is concerned!' cried Joan, fearful of what his words implied. 'Some do look terrible plain in their sleep--as this poor dear did--and some do look beautiful. 'Tis as Nature made 'em--bless their hearts!'

The babe now turned her eyes on Tom, and was gazing on him as if she wanted to look into his very soul, and then, as if she quite approved of what she saw there, gave him a fascinating smile, which won his heart at once.

'You won't take the cheeld out on the moors to-day, Tom, will 'ee?' asked Joan, who was quick to see the change in her man's face.

'We will keep it till I come home from the bal, at any rate,' he said cautiously. And then the babe, as if to show its grat.i.tude for the concession, held up both its little arms to him to be taken out of its costan cradle, whereupon Tom was so delighted at being preferred before his wife that he could hardly conceal his pride.

'That infant do knaw a thing or two, whatever it be,' said Joan to herself, with a chuckle. 'And 'tis a somebody, I can tell, by her little shift and things, which do look as if they was spun out of spiders' webs by the Small People, so fine an' silky they be!'

There was no question now about the little stranger staying; but, all the same, Tom went off to the mine with many misgivings, and he said to himself, as he walked quickly over the moor, that if Joan were too helpless to do for herself, how was she going to tend a babe? And that thought troubled him all the day.

But his fears were needless; for when he got home that evening and looked in at the door, he saw a sight which surprised him, yet gladdened his heart. Joan was sitting in her elbow-chair, with a face as bright as a moon in a cloudless sky, cuddling the strange babe, who was babbling to the kind face looking down into it as it lay in her arms.

'However did 'ee manage to lift the cheeld on to your lap, Joan?' he asked, when his wife saw him.

'Aw! we managed somehow or tuther between us,' she answered, with a happy laugh. 'It was as light as a feather, it was,' chirping to the babe, 'an' I do think the Small People gave it a hoist on to Mammie Trebisken's lap! Eh, my handsome?' speaking to the babe. 'An' it haven't a been a mite o' trouble nuther all this blessed day!' And then, looking up at Tom with a look he never forgot: 'An' it have a-lifted the latch of my loneliness, an' I am as happy as a queen!'

Tom was thankful to hear all this, and he thought it was no accident that had brought such comfort to his poor lonely wife. He had still greater cause for thankfulness as the days wore on; for as Joan now had her thoughts taken from herself in having a babe--which, by the way, was a maiden babe--to think for and to attend to as far as she was able, she grew better in health, and before winter was over could go about the house-place 'and do all her little ch.o.r.es her own self,'

she proudly declared. She even swept and sanded her kitchen floor, and made figgy hoggans [23] for her husband's dinner, which she had not been able to do since the early years of their marriage.

There were, however, a few things Joan could not do; but as they were all done for her in some mysterious way, and much better than she herself could have done, it was more a matter for rejoicing than regret. Whenever she put her washing out in the backlet [24] to wait till Tom had time to do it, somebody took it away, and brought it back washed and dried and ironed--all looking as white as May-blossom and smelling as sweet as moor-flowers!

She was never certain who did this kindness for her, but in her heart she believed it was either done by the little old woman who brought the babe or the Small People.

Several happy years pa.s.sed away, and the little child--Ninnie-Dinnie, as they called her--so strangely brought to the moorland cottage and so strangely left, was now able to return some of her foster-parents'

kindness. This she did by helping in small household duties.

Joan, partly because it was right and partly because she feared the rheumatism might some day make her helpless again, had brought her up to be useful.

The child did not at all like work, and, but for Joan's insistence, would have been a regular little do-nothing. Perhaps she would have spared the little maid from many a small household duty if the Pail had allowed it!

In shaking up the moss and leaves in the bramble-basket the evening the mysterious little woman brought it to the cottage, Tom had found at the feet of the babe a small dark Pail, which he said must have been shaped out of a block of black tin left by the Old Men, or ancient Jews, who, ages before the art of turning black tin into white was discovered, worked the Cornish tin-mines. It was very crude, and had nothing remarkable about it save for its look of age and some curious characters cut under its rim, and which, of course, neither he nor his wife could read.

They thought the Pail was put into the bramble-basket for the child to play with, and telling themselves they would give her a better plaything when she was old enough, they set it on the dresser.

They were soon to learn that the Pail was something more than a child's toy, and had strange properties of making itself light or dark at will, thrusting its characters out of the metal in strong relief from its surface and withdrawing them again!

Tom declared it had in some mysterious way to do with the little creature's welfare, and that it was a kind of conscience--a Small People's conscience, perhaps. But Joan said she believed it was something more than that, if there was any meaning in the words of the song the d.i.n.ky old woman in the bal-bonnet had sung.

But, whoever was right, there was no doubt that the Pail showed its approval or disapproval of whatever Ninnie-Dinnie did! If the little maid was especially helpful and kind, the Pail became a lovely shade of silver and gray, and its letters stood out in glittering distinctness; but if she was lazy, or spoke rudely to her foster-parents, it grew darker than hornblende, and its characters were hardly visible.

This strange property of the Pail made Joan feel quite creepy when she first discovered its peculiarity, which she happened to do one day when Ninnie-Dinnie was very fractious and would do nothing she was bidden. She got used to it in time, and was even glad it showed its pleasure, or otherwise, in the manner it did.

She often told her husband that, when the little maid was particularly kind to her when he was at the bal, the Pail would laugh all over its sides.

Ninnie-Dinnie was now in her eighth year, counting the year she was brought to the cottage, and a dear, useful little maid she was; and no one to beat her anywhere for work, Tom declared, particularly when her size was considered.

The child was very small, so small that she could still sleep in the basket cradle she came in--and did too, for the simple reason that she was wakeful all night if she slept anywhere else.

Both Tom and Joan were sometimes troubled at her size. For she never seemed to grow bigger or fatter, whatever they gave her to eat, and they feared she would always be a little Go-by-the-ground. [25]

Joan, however, consoled herself that perhaps she was an off relation of the dear Little People.

Although Ninnie-Dinnie was exceedingly tiny, she was very sharp, and asked more questions in a day than they could answer in a year. She wanted to know the why and wherefore of everything--what the moor-flowers were made of, and who lived inside the great grey carns, and what made Carn Kenidzhek hoot--was it the giant who lived inside it?--and much besides that neither Tom nor Joan could answer, because they did not know themselves.

Tom said she was wise beyond her years, and all owing to her being moped in the cottage so much, and that she ought to be out of doors more. Joan quite agreed with him, and suggested that he should take her with him sometimes over the moor, only stipulating that she was not to go as far as the mine-works.

Tom considered this a splendid idea; and so, every now and then, when Ninnie-Dinnie was willing, she accompanied him part of the way, and as there was only one road leading back to the cottage, she easily found her way home alone.