"The story was told me in Devonshire dialect when I was a little girl," said Miss Pollard, as she closed her book, "but I wrote it in ordinary English because the other is so hard to understand. It's funny that in the accounts of fairies they always seem to speak the local languages. Irish fairies talk Erse, and Welsh fairies sing in Welsh. Have you pixies in the north, Mavis?"
"They're called 'boggarts' in our part of the world," laughed Mavis, "and I suppose they talk dialect. There's a north-country story about a boggart—a creature something like a brownie—that lived at a farm, and was such a bother that the people thought they'd remove to get rid of him. They put all their furniture on a cart, and started out. They met a neighbour, who said to them: 'So thee's flittin'!' and the boggart popped its ugly little head out of the churn and said: 'Aye, we's flittin'!'.
"The people were so disgusted to find that it intended to go with them to new quarters that they turned back to their old farm and decided to put up with the nuisance."
"Ayah used to tell us Indian fairy tales," said Mamie, "but they were about princes and devas and lovely ladies."
"There are fairy tales all over the world," said Miss Pollard, "and if we go on telling them we shall never stop. It's time for preparation now. You little people must run away, and the others must fetch their books. Mavis and Merle must come some time to have tea with us again."
CHAPTER XII
Pixie-led
Next morning Merle got out of bed on the wrong side. She did it deliberately and with intention. It was a rather awkward business to achieve, too, for the beds were placed close together with only a few inches between them, and to make her left-handed exit she was obliged to scramble over the recumbent form of Mavis, who protested sleepily.
"Don't care! Bags me first innings at the hot water," blustered Merle, bouncing down with a plump on to the rush mat in front of the wash-hand stand.
"Don't care came to a bad end," quoted a dormouse voice among the blankets.