‘That’s true,’ said Granfer Nankivell; ‘all the same, I am certain sure that our dear little grandcheeld would not go and eat up the things.’
‘Then who did?’ asked the old woman with a snap.
‘The little Piskeys, I shouldn’t wonder,’ he answered. ‘My great-grannie told me they were little greedy-guts, and in her days they used to skim the cream off the milk, and eat all the cheese-cakes she used to make, unless she put some for them outside on the doorstep. Regular little thieves the Piskeys were in her days. P’raps they haven’t learnt to be honest yet. There are plenty about now, and Little Moormen too, by the teheeing and tehoing I have heard lately, waiting, I dare say, to play some of their pranks on me.’
But Grannie Nankivell was still unconvinced, and still believed it was Genefer, and not the Piskeys, who ate her biscuits and junket.
One evening the old woman put another bowl of junket and a dish of biscuits in the spence, and was as careful as before to bar the window and lock the door; and in the middle of the night, when her husband was fast asleep and snoring, she got up and came downstairs to see if she could find out for certain who it was that ate up her good things. When she came down, whom should she see but her little grand-daughter Genefer standing by the spence-door in her little bedgown.
‘I am fine and glad you have come, Grannie,’ whispered the child, before the old woman could say anything. ‘I believe it is the Piskeys who have eaten the junket and things you made for Granfer. I saw a dinky little fellow not much bigger than your thumb go in through the keyhole just now. They are having a fine time in there, anyhow,’ as her grandmother looked at her oddly. ‘If I were you, I would look through the keyhole and see what they are doing.’
And through the keyhole the old woman looked, and saw, to her amazement, scores and scores of green-coated little men, whiskered like a man, on the oak table, standing round the junket-bowl ladling out the rich, thick junket with their tiny little hands, and half a dozen other little chaps were up in the window-sill passing out her delicious sugar biscuits to the Tiny Moormen, who were even more whiskered and bearded than their distant relations, the Piskeys.
By their faces, they were all greatly enjoying themselves, and at the expense of Granfer Nankivell, the turf-cutter!
Grannie Nankivell was so astonished that she lost her mouth-speech,[2] but when she found it her old voice shrilled through the keyhole:
‘Filling your little bellies with the junket and biskeys I made for my old man, be ’ee?’ she cried. ‘I’ll wring the necks of every one of you—iss fy, I will!’