The Piskey Purse Part 9

'Why, make another song, of course, you foolish little knaw-nothing!' cried Joan, laying her pain-twisted fingers on the child's elfin locks.

'It has no music to make a song with; it gave it all to me to take home to my dear Mammie Trebisken,' said the little maid.

Once more the lark's song came out of the Pail, and Joan said it was sweeter and wilder and freer than even the second time. As she listened intently she was carried to her courting days, when she and Tom took their Sunday walks through the growing corn and flaming poppies to hear the larks sing. Then as the songster came earthward again and its music died away into the silence of the years, or into the Pail, she was too bewildered to say which, there appeared on the threshold of the door the little lark, which, as she looked at it, trailed its wings and piped: 'Give me back my music! Give me back my song!' and its sad cry went right down into her pitiful heart.

'I was a selfish body to want to keep what didn't belong to me,'

she cried, and she told Ninnie-Dinnie to give it back what it wanted.

'I can't give back: you only can do that,' said the little maid. 'I can only bring you what you ask.'

The wee bird in the doorway again made itself heard: 'Give me back my music! Give me back my song!' and so distressful was its pleading that she clutched the child's shoulder and went at once to the dresser, and, almost before she knew it, she was standing at the door with the Pail in her hand.

'Take your music and your song, you poor little dear,' she said in her tenderest voice to the bird; 'and go along home to your mate, and make her as happy as you have made my heart this day.'

She turned the Pail over on its side as she spoke, and the lark flew into it; and in a minute or less it was out again and away into the semi-darkness, singing its own ecstatic song as it went!

Tom came up the road as it flew off; and as she waited there by the door for him to help her back to her chair, the little old woman's rhyme came back to her, the last line of which floated through her brain:

'To give her a treasure From out of the blue.

When she shall know too 'Tis better to give than to keep my pednpaley!'

A year and four months went by, and Joan was quite helpless again--as helpless as when the babe was brought to her--and but for that babe, now to childhood grown, she did not know what she would have done. Her man was not so young as he was, and had a great deal more to do at the mine, and therefore less time to devote to woman's work. But thanks to Ninnie-Dinnie's careful training, his services in this respect were not required. The little maid now did all the work of the small cottage, and the cooking too--even to making the hoggans for Tom's dinner. Besides which, she waited on her dear Mammie Trebisken hand and foot, and made the poor sufferer's life as happy as possible under the circ.u.mstances. Tom wondered how she did it all, 'and such a d.i.n.ky little soul too--not much bigger than a little pednpaley itself,'

he said.

Ninnie-Dinnie did not go out on the moor all this time, and nothing Joan could say would make her. But when July came, and the blackberry brambles were in flower, and the great moors began to look beautifully purple with the bloom of the heather, she cast wistful glances out of the window, and one bright morning she asked Tom to take her with him a little way.

Her eye caught the darkening look of the Pail as she was putting on her sunbonnet, and she thought the look meant she must take it with her, and she did.

'What shall I bring you home?' she asked, looking over her shoulder at Joan as she and Tom were going out of the door; and the invalid, catching sight of a sunbeamed pool lying high on the heath, said, with a laugh:

'You shall bring me home a pailful of sunbeams from the pool I can see from my chair.'

'A pack of nonsense!' cried Tom. 'As well ask for the moon. I should have thought that our Ninnie-Dinnie,' resting his huge hand on the child's head, 'was all the sunbeam you wanted now.'

'So she is, Tom, when you ent here,' cried the woman, smiling tenderly at both her dears.

'All the same,' said Ninnie-Dinnie, 'I will bring you home a pailful of sunbeams if I can.'

When she and Tom reached the pool, they stopped and looked in, or tried to, for they could not see its bottom for sunbeams, which rippled all over its surface in tiny waves of light.

'Now is your chance to get that pailful of sunbeams thy foolish old Mammie Trebisken axed 'ee to get,' said the miner.

'It is,' said Ninnie-Dinnie in her grave old woman's manner; and, leaning over the pool, she held the Pail over the side and cried: 'Little brown pool, give me thy sunbeams! Little brown pool, give me thy light!' and, to Tom's amazement (he ought not to have been astonished at anything by this time), he saw the light leave the pool and flow into the Pail!

When the moor-pool had given all its sunbeams, and the water was a darker brown than a sparrow's back, Ninnie-Dinnie stood up and looked into her Pail, and Tom looked too, and saw nothing.

'It is full of emptiness,' said he, laughing.

'It is full of the dear little Pool's sunbeams to make Mammie Trebisken's eyes glad,' insisted the child; and covering the Pail very carefully with her pinafore, she went down towards the cottage, and Tom watched her until she was hidden behind a great boulder of granite, and then he too went on his way.

Ninnie-Dinnie did not get home till quite late in the afternoon, and when Joan asked her where she had been so long, she said a little Skavarnak would not let her come before, and that he stood in the path barring the way, till a d.i.n.ky little woman in a bluish cloak came over the moor, and then he sped away through a hole in a carn.

'What a funny thing!' said Joan; 'hares generally keep out of folks'

way. He must be different from other little hares.'

'I am sure he must be,' she said, setting the Pail on the dresser.

'Have 'ee brought the sunbeams?' asked Joan, turning her gaze to the bucket.

'Yes; and by-and-by, when the sun begins to set, you will be able to see them.'

Joan, thinking her Ninnie-Dinnie was pretending--for she saw when the child came into the kitchen that the Pail contained nothing--only laughed.

When the great round sun dropped down to his setting, the crippled woman, happening to turn her face to the dresser, saw a tongue of white flame rise out of the Pail, and on its tip burnt a ruby star!

It startled her almost out of her senses at first; but as it did not grow bigger, but only increased in beauty, she gazed at it with wondering delight.

As the evening darkened over the moor, and the Hooting Carn was dim in the distance, the light in the Pail grew exceedingly beautiful, and took all manner of shapes and colours, and made the room where Joan sat as lovely as the dear Small People's Country, Ninnie-Dinnie said--how she knew, it did not occur to her foster-mother to inquire.

''Tis magic!' cried the woman, looking round the room, 'an' I don't understand it one bit.'

'P'r'aps,' said the child softly, 'it is the dear Little People's way of showing how grateful they feel for your kindness to your little Ninnie-Dinnie.'

'I haven't been kinder than I ought,' began Joan; 'and--'tis raining, surely,' she broke off, as a trickle of water fell on her ear. ''Tis queer, too! There's no sign of wet weather in the sky.'

The child went to the window and looked out.

'There is a tiny stream of water coming down the road,' she said. 'I believe 'tis the little brown Pool coming for its sunbeams.'

'Don't be silly!' cried Joan.

'It is,' said the little maid, looking out again, 'and it has made itself into a dark ring outside our door.'

As she was speaking, a rippling voice broke out:

'Give me back my light! give me back my sunbeams!'

'I won't,' said Joan irritably. 'Why should I, when it is making my little place look handsome? I haven't seen anything like it in all my born days!'

'I was hoping you would give back the poor little brown Pool its shine,' said Ninnie-Dinnie, with a pleading look in her eyes. 'The little flowers that live in the Pool will die without light, and the dear little Sundews will have no silver beads to tip their red spikes.'

'Whatever did 'ee bring me home a pailful of sunbeams for, if you want me to give it away again?' asked the woman still more irritably.

'You asked me to bring you the brown Pool's sunbeams,' said the child gently. 'I did but do what you asked.'

The light in the Pail was redder and brighter than the red planet Mars in his rising or the sun in his setting, and all in the room was a lovely crimson glow, and Joan, as she gazed at the Pail again, heard the rippling voice outside her door: 'Give me my light! give me my sunbeams!' and it continued rippling its demand until the woman's kind heart was troubled.