‘I’m beginning to think our Ninnie-Dinnie is one of the Wee Folk her own self,’ said Joan to herself, still gazing at the quaint little figure, with its dark, unfathomable eyes, and its elfin locks framing the gentle little face, ‘an’ that she is the Skillywidden its mammie hid for safety in a cottage. She is a dear little soul, whoever she is, an’ I wouldn’t part with her now—no, not for a bal full o’ diamonds.’
As these thoughts travelled through her mind, the three little hares on the doorstep wailed out their entreaty again: ‘Give us back our Daddy Skavarnak! Give us back our Daddy Long-Ears!’ and the hare in the Magic Pail lifted his head and looked beseechingly at the child, who, however, took no notice of him.
The three little hares continued to cry on, and although it worried Joan’s kind heart to hear it, she steeled herself against them on account of their daddy’s cruelty, but into Ninnie-Dinnie’s eyes there stole a wondrous pity.
‘Poor little things!’ she whispered to herself; and then, looking up at her foster-mother, she said softly: ‘You may let the Long-Eared free if you like.’
‘But I don’t like,’ said Joan severely. ‘Why should I, when he have a-been so unkind to the dear Little People?’
‘I would like you to give him his liberty if he will promise to go away from our moor and never come back any more for five hundred years,’ continued the child, who apparently had not noticed the interruption. ‘If he does not keep his promise after he is set free, he will run the terrible risk of again being taken prisoner in the Magic Pail and having Daddy Trebisken’s threat carried out upon him.’
‘What threat?’ asked Joan. ‘Aw, I remember now—his being put into a hoggan for my Tom’s dinner. He is too bad for my good Tom to make a meal of,’ shaking her head at the hare in the Pail. ‘He will have to be made into a pasty, as a warning to all evil-intending Long-Ears.’
The poor animal in the Pail could not have looked more wretched if he was to be made into a pasty there and then, and he cried in his terror, and the three little hares on the doorstep lifted up their small voices in sympathy.
The latter’s wails were more than Joan’s tender heart could stand.
‘Poor little things!’ she cried, looking first at the small Long-Ears and then at Ninnie-Dinnie. ‘If he will promise to do what you want him, I’ll set him free. ‘Tis hard they should suffer for their wicked old daddy’s wrongdoing.’