‘I won’t,’ said Joan irritably. ‘Why should I, when it is making my little place look handsome? I haven’t seen anything like it in all my born days!’
‘I was hoping you would give back the poor little brown Pool its shine,’ said Ninnie-Dinnie, with a pleading look in her eyes. ‘The little flowers that live in the Pool will die without light, and the dear little Sundews will have no silver beads to tip their red spikes.’
‘Whatever did ’ee bring me home a pailful of sunbeams for, if you want me to give it away again?’ asked the woman still more irritably.
‘You asked me to bring you the brown Pool’s sunbeams,’ said the child gently. ‘I did but do what you asked.’
The light in the Pail was redder and brighter than the red planet Mars in his rising or the sun in his setting, and all in the room was a lovely crimson glow, and Joan, as she gazed at the Pail again, heard the rippling voice outside her door: ‘Give me my light! give me my sunbeams!’ and it continued rippling its demand until the woman’s kind heart was troubled.
‘Poor little Pool!’ she said to herself at last. ‘I expect it is feeling as wisht without its light as I was before my Ninnie-Dinnie came in the costan. ’Tis wrong to want to keep what will brighten something else. I don’t s’pose even a little moor-pool can be happy and bear flowers on its bosom without sunbeams and light,’ and she told the child to give back the Pool its own.
‘I can’t,’ said Ninnie-Dinnie. ‘Only you can do that. Lean on me,’ offering her tiny arm, ‘and I’ll help you to get the Pail to give the dear little Pool its sunbeams.’
Joan was greatly amused that a dinky little maid like her, scarcely bigger than a large doll, could support a great helpless body like herself to walk across the floor; and she laughed, and, as she laughed, the Pool cried again in such a beseeching voice that she unwittingly put her hand on the child’s shoulder, and immediately found herself at the door, with the Pail in her hand, before she knew!
‘I give ’ee back your brightness, dear little Pool,’ she said, ‘and much obliged I am to ’ee for letting me have it here in my little room. Now go along home to where you belong, amongst the griglans.’[22] And the little Pool took its shine and left, twisting and twirling its way back to its place, shining and rippling as it went.
‘The pool will shine all the more brightly to-morrow for having given you its sunbeams,’ said the child, as she helped Joan back to her chair.