“Gormed if I didn’t think I’d got ’e!” squeaked a voice at her elbow, and looking round the child saw a tiny monster, four inches high, black as coal, hairy as a spider, more horrible than any nightmare. He peered into her face with eyes like hot coals, and waved his lantern over his head.
“You horrid little cruel wretch!” cried the child. “Don’t think I’m a bit frightened of you, because I’m not.” Which was perfectly true, for the speaker had a father who knew everything by its name, and the reason for everything, and the cause of everything, and what everything was made of, and why. Therefore the advantage in the present instance lay wholly with her, after she had escaped; because there cannot be any real comparison between a highly-educated little lady of nine years old and an ignorant country bumpkin of a Jacky-Toad, born and bred in a Devon quagmire. And if you never heard of a Jacky-Toad, know that he is one with your Will-o’-the-Wisp, or your Jack-a-Lantern, or your Marsh Galloper, or the Ignis Fatuus of the scholar.
“Ban’t you afeared?” asked the imp.
“No—not now. You’re only a naughty, ugly Will-o’-the-Wisp.”
“I be a Jacky-Twoad, I be.”
“You may call yourself what you like; you’re nothing but a puff of phosphuretted hydrogen, because I’ve heard my father say so.”
“Aw! I ban’t very well eddicated myself.”
“I should think not! Else you’d know it was a cruel, wicked, heartless thing to play practical jokes on small girls lost in the dark. One more step and I should have been sucked down I don’t know where.”
“Ess fay! You’d a bin drownded in another minute.”
“Well, what did you want to do such a horrid thing for?”