Joan, partly because it was right and partly because she feared the rheumatism might some day make her helpless again, had brought her up to be useful.
The child did not at all like work, and, but for Joan’s insistence, would have been a regular little do-nothing. Perhaps she would have spared the little maid from many a small household duty if the Pail had allowed it!
In shaking up the moss and leaves in the bramble-basket the evening the mysterious little woman brought it to the cottage, Tom had found at the feet of the babe a small dark Pail, which he said must have been shaped out of a block of black tin left by the Old Men, or ancient Jews, who, ages before the art of turning black tin into white was discovered, worked the Cornish tin-mines. It was very crude, and had nothing remarkable about it save for its look of age and some curious characters cut under its rim, and which, of course, neither he nor his wife could read.
They thought the Pail was put into the bramble-basket for the child to play with, and telling themselves they would give her a better plaything when she was old enough, they set it on the dresser.
They were soon to learn that the Pail was something more than a child’s toy, and had strange properties of making itself light or dark at will, thrusting its characters out of the metal in strong relief from its surface and withdrawing them again!
Tom declared it had in some mysterious way to do with the little creature’s welfare, and that it was a kind of conscience—a Small People’s conscience, perhaps. But Joan said she believed it was something more than that, if there was any meaning in the words of the song the dinky old woman in the bal-bonnet had sung.
But, whoever was right, there was no doubt that the Pail showed its approval or disapproval of whatever Ninnie-Dinnie did! If the little maid was especially helpful and kind, the Pail became a lovely shade of silver and gray, and its letters stood out in glittering distinctness; but if she was lazy, or spoke rudely to her foster-parents, it grew darker than hornblende, and its characters were hardly visible.
This strange property of the Pail made Joan feel quite creepy when she first discovered its peculiarity, which she happened to do one day when Ninnie-Dinnie was very fractious and would do nothing she was bidden. She got used to it in time, and was even glad it showed its pleasure, or otherwise, in the manner it did.
She often told her husband that, when the little maid was particularly kind to her when he was at the bal, the Pail would laugh all over its sides.
Ninnie-Dinnie was now in her eighth year, counting the year she was brought to the cottage, and a dear, useful little maid she was; and no one to beat her anywhere for work, Tom declared, particularly when her size was considered.