“When?” said Lilac eagerly as Peter paused.
“It was last Saint Barnaby’s, and I’d been up to Cuddingham with None-so-pretty. It was late when I got back, and I remembered I hadn’t locked the stable door, and I went across the yard to do it—”
“Well?” said Lilac with breathless interest.
“So as I went, it was most as light as day, and I saw as plain as could be something flit in at the stable door. ’Twasn’t so big as a man, nor so small as a boy, and its head was white. So then I thought, ‘Surely ’tis the brownie, for night’s his working time,’ and I’d half a mind to take a peep and see him at it. But they say if you look him in the face he’ll quit, so I just locked the door and left him there. When Benson talked that way about the credit of the farm, I knew who we’d got to thank. Howsomever,” added Peter seriously, “you mustn’t thank him, nor yet pay him, else he’ll spite you instead of working for you.”
As he finished his story he turned to his cousin a face beaming with the most childlike faith; but it suddenly clouded with disappointment, for Lilac, no longer gravely attentive, was laughing heartily.
“I thought maybe you’d laugh at me,” he said, turning his head away ashamed.
Lilac checked her laughter. “Here’s a riddle,” she said. “The brownie you locked into the stable that night always makes the butter. He isn’t never thanked nor yet paid, but you’ve looked him in the face scores of times.”
Peter gazed blankly at her.
“You’re doing of it now!” she cried with a chuckle of delight; “you’re looking at the brownie now! Why, you great goose, it’s me as has made the butter this ever so long, and it was me as was in the stable on Saint Barnaby’s!”
It was only by very slow degrees that Peter could turn his mind from the brownie, on whom it had been fixed for weeks past, to take in this new and astonishing idea. Even when Lilac had told her story many times, and explained every detail of how she had learnt to be dairymaid, he broke out again: