Peter shook his head.
“I don’t say as there is a brownie at the farm,” he said.
“But you think he helps make the butter,” said Lilac scornfully.
Peter turned his eyes upon his companion; her face was hidden from him by her sunbonnet, but her slender form and the sound of her voice seemed both to quiver with indignation and contempt.
“Well, then, who does?” he asked.
But Lilac only held her head up higher and kept a dignified silence; she was thoroughly put out with Peter, and if he was so silly it really was no use to talk to him.
Conscious that he was in disgrace, Peter fidgeted uneasily with his reins, whipped his horse, and cast some almost frightened glances over his shoulder at the silent little figure beside him, then he coughed several times, and finally, with an effort which seemed to make his face broader and redder every minute, began to speak:
“I’d sooner plough a field than talk any day, but but I’ll tell you something if I can put it together. Words is so hard to frame, so as to say what you mean. Maybe you’ll only think me stupider after I’m done, but this is how it was—”
He stopped short, and Lilac said gently and encouragingly, “How was it, Peter?”
“I’ve had a sort of a queer feeling lately that there’s something different at the farm. Something that runs through everything, as you might say. The beasts do their work as well again, and the sun shines brighter, and the flowers bloom prettier, and there’s a kind of a pleasantness about the place. I can’t set it down to anything, any more than I know why the sky’s blue, but it’s there all the same. So I thought over it a deal, and one day I was up in the High field, and all of a sudden it rapped into my head what Grannie Dunch says about the brownie as used to work at the farm. ‘Maybe,’ I says to myself, ‘he’s come back.’ So I didn’t say nothing, but I took notice, and things went on getting better, and I got to feel there was someone there helping on the work—but I wasn’t not to say certain sure it was the brownie, till one night—”