Another day mother brought the same girl into the garden, where Winnie was at work, to give her some vegetables.
"Did you try the charm?" the girl asked.
"Yes, indeed," Winnie replied.
"And did it work?"
"Oh, famously! There is a wood-pecker in the old tree just outside of my window, and he wakes me by his drumming every morning. This morning I understood for the first time just what he has been saying. It was 'Wake up, wake up! little rascal, little rascal, little rascal!'"
The girl stared at Winnie in open-mouthed astonishment. "You must be a witch," she said.
"That's what they call me—Witch Winnie."
They were standing beside mother's bed of herbs, and the frightened girl pulled up a stalk of rue and held it at arm's length, as though it were a protection. "Don't come nigh me! don't work any of your tricks on me!" she said.
Winnie explained that she was only in sport, but the girl was only half reassured, and still clung to the spray of rue.
Miss Prillwitz afterward explained that rue, like vervain, was supposed to "hinder witches of their will," probably from the fact that it was once used in the Church of Rome, bound in fagots, as a holy-water sprinkler, and is spoken of in old writings as the "Herb of Grace."