When the children came home, Great-Grannie was all eagerness to know if the purse were found, and when Gelert told her it was not, and that Gerna had been looking for shells instead of the lost Piskey-purse, her anger knew no bounds, and she smacked the poor little maid, and once more sent her supperless to bed.
‘I wish all the Spriggans’ gold would be swallowed up in the sea,’ said poor Gerna, as she went up to the little bed-chamber. ‘Great-Grannie was never vexed with me before that Dinky Man wanted to make me rich with his golden pieces. ’Tis better to be poor an’ contented, I reckon, than to be rich and be miserable.’
The ancient dame, finding her toe getting worse, followed her small great-granddaughter upstairs, and as she did not go down again that night, Gerna had no chance of speaking to the little prisoner. Nor had she the next morning, for she was kept so busy, what with bathing Great-Grannie’s injured toe, and all the other odds and ends of things she had to do before going down to the bay, that she had not a minute to herself until bedtime.
The old woman, in her desire for gold, no longer considered the voracious appetites of her numerous ducks, and told the children that, as the finding of that lost purse was of such great importance, the limpet-picking must stand over until the purse was found.
Gelert was delighted to be relieved of an uncongenial task, and went off to search for the purse with a light heart; but Gerna, not wanting to go to the beach at all, begged to stay at home, which made Great-Grannie so cross that she said she was not to come back until she had found it.
Either the clock had gone wrong or the old woman’s brain, for it was much later than she thought, and when the children got down to the bay the sea was rushing up the sands at such a terrible speed that the time for searching was very short. It had surrounded the rocks where the limpets clung when they got there, and was almost up to Piskey Goog.
Gelert went to the other side of the bay at once, leaving Pentire side to Gerna. But as the little maid knew there was no other purse to find than the one she had found, she began again to pick up shells. There were very lovely shells on the sands to-day, all the colours of the rainbow—in fact, they looked as they lay in the eye of the sun as if they had fallen from the sky. As the child was stooping to pick them up, out of the cavern came a troop of little Brown Men, with the Wee Man who had always spoken to her at the head.
He made at once for the child.
‘Picking up shells again!’ he cried, ‘and all those purses of gold awaiting you there in the goog! Why, I am beginning to think you do not want to be rich. Do you?’
‘I did issterday,[7] but I don’t one little bit now,’ said the child, turning her frank gaze full upon the little Dark Man’s upturned face.