After tendering him my most ardent thanks for his kindness I ventured to ask what we should do with the dead body.
‘Leave that to me,’ he replied. ‘But now as the day is dawning, and I must soon be gone, do you wish to return to your former rank of a happy, honest labourer, being deprived of the beauty which has been the source of so much trouble to you, or will you remain as you are? Decide quickly, for my time is limited.’
I replied unhesitatingly, ‘Let me return to my former rank,’ and no sooner were the words out of my mouth than I found myself standing alone at the porch of my humble cottage, plain and coarse as ever, without any remains of the extreme comeliness with which I had been so lately invested.
I cast a glance at the tall towers of Ducie Castle which appeared in the distance faintly illuminated by the light reflected from rosy clouds hovering over the eastern horizon, and then, stooping as I passed beneath the lowly lintel, once more crossed the threshold of my parental hut.
A day or two after, while I was sitting at breakfast; a neighbour entered and, after inquiring how I did, etc., asked me where I had been for the last half year. Seeing it necessary to dissemble, I answered that I had been on a visit to a relation who lived at a great distance. This satisfied him, and I then inquired if anything had happened in the village since my departure.
‘Yes,’ said he, ‘a little while after you were gone Lady Ducie married the handsomest young man that was ever seen, but nobody knew where he came from, and most people thought he was a fairy; and now about four days ago Lady Ducie, her husband, and Lord Standon’s eldest daughter all vanished in the same night and have never been heard of since, though the strictest search has been made after them. Yesterday her ladyship’s brother came and took possession of the estate, and he is trying to hush up the matter as much as he can.’
This intelligence gave me no small degree of satisfaction, as I was now certain that none of the villagers had any suspicion of my dealings with the fairy.
But to proceed. I had yet liberty to make three more wishes; and, after much consideration, being convinced of the vanity of desiring such a transitory thing as my first, I fixed upon ‘superior talent’ as the aim of my second wish; and no sooner had I done so than I felt an expansion, as it were, of soul within me.
Everything appeared to my mental vision in a new light. High thoughts elevated my mind, and abstruse meditations racked my brain continually. But you shall presently hear the upshot of this sudden éclaircissement.
One day I was sent to a neighbouring market town, by one Mr. Tenderden, a gentleman of some consequence in our village, for the purpose of buying several articles in glass and china.