THE FAIRIES
My mother used to call the three old women servants her three duchesses. Alas! two of these dignitaries passed away very early in my recollection. Fortunately, Mobie, the best beloved, was left to us till later years. It is to her that my thoughts most readily return.
She was a store-house of anecdotes and legends. Never would she speak, nor allow anyone to speak before her, of the fairies otherwise than as “the good people”; and then it was with bated breath. It was established as a fact among us that in her girlhood she had had communication with them. Certainly, we believed, she had seen them one evening dancing in a ring; but never could she be got to tell us in detail anything about these experiences. The very mystery of her silence confirmed our theory.
What a delightful volume one could have made out of the tales that fell from her lips upon our small listening ears by the nursery fire; or in the linen room with its uncurtained window and its vision of the Three Kings and the Star.
From many memories one floats back to me. It made a great impression:
“... And when Tim Brenahan was on his way home that evening, wasn’t it round by the wall he went, and didn’t he see two great cats sitting on the top of it with their tails hanging over? And didn’t one cat say to the other, as plain as can be, and didn’t he hear it, just as you do be hearing me:
“Says one, ‘And what’s the news this evening?’ And says the other, ‘No news at all,’ says he. ‘Only that the widdie Moloney’s old tabby’s gone at last,’ says he, ‘and it’s the great funeral will be to-night,’ says he.
“And when Tim Brenahan came home to his wife, says she to him, ‘And what’s the news this evening, Tim, asthore?’
