They scrambled up the legs and back of the old fiddle-back chair, and were on the bed in a quick-stick, and took their places near the sleeping child. Some sat all in a row on the edge of the patchwork quilt; some sat, or stood, on the pillow behind the child’s bright little head; others were low down on the pillow; and one winking, blinking little Piskey perched himself on her arm and sat cross-legged like a tailor.
‘I will be the first to order the little maid’s dream,’ said one of the Piskeys sitting on the edge of the quilt, and scrambling up, he stepped on to Phillida’s nose as light as the feathers which the old Sky Woman had flung down on the moors, and as he walked over the bridge he said:
He stepped on to Phillida’s nose as light as the feathers of the old Sky Woman.
‘Dream, little maid—dream that you are wide awake, and that you and Grannie Tredinnick are sitting at a table covered with a cloth as white as Piskey-wool,[8] and that in the middle of the table is a lovely cake made
‘“Of the finest of flour
And fairy cow’s cream—
As sweet as your dream—
And Small People’s spice,
And everything nice,