There was no question now about the little stranger staying; but, all the same, Tom went off to the mine with many misgivings, and he said to himself, as he walked quickly over the moor, that if Joan were too helpless to do for herself, how was she going to tend a babe? And that thought troubled him all the day.
But his fears were needless; for when he got home that evening and looked in at the door, he saw a sight which surprised him, yet gladdened his heart. Joan was sitting in her elbow-chair, with a face as bright as a moon in a cloudless sky, cuddling the strange babe, who was babbling to the kind face looking down into it as it lay in her arms.
‘However did ’ee manage to lift the cheeld on to your lap, Joan?’ he asked, when his wife saw him.
‘Aw! we managed somehow or tuther between us,’ she answered, with a happy laugh. ‘It was as light as a feather, it was,’ chirping to the babe, ‘an’ I do think the Small People gave it a hoist on to Mammie Trebisken’s lap! Eh, my handsome?’ speaking to the babe. ‘An’ it haven’t a been a mite o’ trouble nuther all this blessed day!’ And then, looking up at Tom with a look he never forgot: ‘An’ it have a-lifted the latch of my loneliness, an’ I am as happy as a queen!’
Tom was thankful to hear all this, and he thought it was no accident that had brought such comfort to his poor lonely wife. He had still greater cause for thankfulness as the days wore on; for as Joan now had her thoughts taken from herself in having a babe—which, by the way, was a maiden babe—to think for and to attend to as far as she was able, she grew better in health, and before winter was over could go about the house-place ‘and do all her little chores her own self,’ she proudly declared. She even swept and sanded her kitchen floor, and made figgy hoggans[12] for her husband’s dinner, which she had not been able to do since the early years of their marriage.
There were, however, a few things Joan could not do; but as they were all done for her in some mysterious way, and much better than she herself could have done, it was more a matter for rejoicing than regret. Whenever she put her washing out in the backlet[13] to wait till Tom had time to do it, somebody took it away, and brought it back washed and dried and ironed—all looking as white as May-blossom and smelling as sweet as moor-flowers!
‘“However did ’ee manage to lift the cheeld on to your lap?”’
She was never certain who did this kindness for her, but in her heart she believed it was either done by the little old woman who brought the babe or the Small People.
Several happy years passed away, and the little child—Ninnie-Dinnie, as they called her—so strangely brought to the moorland cottage and so strangely left, was now able to return some of her foster-parents’ kindness. This she did by helping in small household duties.