When she got to the bottom of the road, she met four little Piskeys coming up, carrying a large Piskey-bag between them; and being very anxious to know what they were going to do with the dark-brown thing, she said:
‘My little dears, will you kindly tell me what you are going to do with the Piskey-bag?’
They were evidently too surprised to answer the old woman at once, for she had never spoken to them before, and they stared up at her open-mouthed.
‘To sleep in when the cold weather comes,’ answered a Piskey at last.
‘They are ever so comfortable to snuggle under when the snow is on the ground,’ said another little Piskey.
‘Sleep in them, do you?’ cried old Jinnie, greatly interested. ‘To think of it now! I expect they are as warm as the blanketing the blanket-weavers weave in their looms at Padstow. But I never knew before you slept in the bags; I thought you kept your money in them.’
‘We don’t, then,’ cried the Piskeys, grinning all over their little elf faces, which were almost as brown as the Piskey-bag they were carrying. ‘We use the tiny young bags to keep our money in, not big ones like this.’
‘Up we go!’ cried one of the Piskeys to his companions, giving the one nearest him a poke in his ribs; and the four little Brown Men began to ascend the steep road, carrying the Piskey-bag by its four tails, swinging it to and fro, and shrieking with laughter as they swung it.
Jinnie watched them for a few minutes, and then went down to the pebbly beach, where she saw dozens of little Brown Men in companies of four, each company bearing a Piskey-bag between them.
There was a long string of these Little People from the water’s edge to where she met them, which was about a dozen yards from the foot of the steep road.