“I’m called Mabel, and I’m spending my holidays on Dartmoor; and, playing hide-and-seek after tea, I got lost. But I live in London, and I’m going back there to-morrow.”
“Wheer be that to?”
“Far, far away. There are no greedy shaking-bogs there, and no darkness like this, and no dead bones scattered about, and no wicked Jacky-Toads either.”
Mabel, though a clever child, didn’t know everything.
“You’m a purty li’l’ maid seemin’ly, an’ mighty wise tu by the looks of it.”
This in itself was flattering, because it is given to but few small girls to be complimented by a genuine Devon Jacky-Toad.
“The thing is to be pretty inside,” answered Mabel. “My mamma tells me it doesn’t matter—not much—what we look like outside.”
“That’s a gude job then, for ’tis allowed among Jacky-Twoads in general that I be ugly enough for a show.”
“You’re wicked inside too; you must be, or you wouldn’t have tried to drown a little harmless girl.”
“I be sorry,” said the Jacky-Toad frankly. “I never looked at the question from your p’int o’ view. Conversation do widen the mind amazin’.”