‘He is getting smaller!’ exclaimed Gerna. ‘Why, he is a teeny, tiny Farmer Vivian now! Ah, dear! how queer everything is! Everything is queer an’ funny since I picked up that purse with the rings ‘pon it an’ dear little you inside.’
‘Cannot you guess who he is?’ asked the little fairy, her lovely wee face more tender than the June sky over them.
‘No,’ returned the wondering child. ‘Who is he?’
‘My own little True Love!’ answered the fairy, her eyes a blue light. ‘We are meeting each other after a century of black years. He was my True Love all the time in the form of big Farmer Vivian! For love of poor little me he kept in the neighbourhood of Piskey Goog all that time.’
It was all so surprising that Gerna told herself she would never be surprised any more whatever happened. And when the two Wee Lovers, separated by cruel Fate for one hundred years, met and greeted each other in lover fashion, all over the great moor broke the sound of pealing bells, so tiny and so silvery and with such music in their tones the like of which Gerna had never in all her life heard before. And where the bells were rung from she never knew, for there were no steeples or towers anywhere that she could see. As the bells’ music rang on, and all the little moorland birds sang more entrancingly than before, she saw hundreds and hundreds of the Small People, all more or less beautiful, come out from behind clumps of Bog-myrtle, and banks of thyme, and beds of sweet-scented orchis,[11] all laughing and singing as they came towards the Tolmên, where the dear Little Lady and her True Love were standing hand in hand, smiling and bowing and looking as happy as ever they could look.
The little prisoner, who was now a prisoner no longer, seemed to be a very great personage indeed, the child thought, judging by the way the Wee Men took off their caps and bowed to her, and the little ladies made their curtseys; and in truth she was a real Princess, the eldest daughter of the King and Queen of the Good Little People, as Gerna was soon to learn.
There was great rejoicing when the Wee Folk heard how their Princess Royal had been set free, and how much Gerna had done towards it. They could not make enough of her, or do enough for her. They kissed her hands, as if she too were a Royal Princess, instead of being only a poor little Cornish peasant girl! They brought her fairy mead—methéglin they called it—in cups so small yet so exquisite (’like Cornish diamonds, only more lovely,’ Gerna said), and gave her food to eat from dishes all iris-hued like the shells that she had picked up on the sands in her own bay, only the Small People’s dishes were much thinner and more transparent than any shells she had ever seen.
She was never ‘treated so handsome before,’ she told herself—scores and scores of dear wee creatures to wait on her and to give her more when she wanted!
When she could not eat ‘a morsel more,’ nor drink another cup of the all-sweet mead, her own Little Lady and her True Love, who had been sitting close to her all this time on a bed of yellow trefoil, rose up and took her through a rock-door behind the Tolmên and down into a most beautiful place—much more beautiful than she could ever have pictured in her wildest dreams.
It was the country where the Good Little People lived, ‘Farmer Vivian’ told her. She saw so much that she could take in nothing until they came to the King’s Palace, which was the most beautiful palace in fairyland. Here she was taken into room after room—each more beautiful than the last—until she came to a place called the ‘Room of the Chair,’ which was full of soft voices, fragrant smells, and sweet music. This room was open to the blue dome of the sky, and away at the end of it, on a Chair, sat two Wee People with eyes the colour of her dear Little Lady’s. They were not different from the other Small People surrounding the Chair, save that they had ‘things on their heads,’ as Gerna expressed it (which, of course, were crowns), that shone like the blue of the sea when the sun shines on it, and that they looked even more gracious and more gentle and kind than did her own Little Dear.