One day—the very day of the same month she was brought to the cottage in the bramble-basket ten years before—Tom, noticing the longing glances, begged her to go with him a little way, and Ninnie-Dinnie, after asking the crippled woman if she could spare her, got ready to go.
‘I thought you wouldn’t want to take the Pail along with you now the Long-Eared can’t hurt ’ee any more,’ said Joan, as the child went to the dresser for the Pail.
‘And yet I must take it,’ she replied. ‘What shall I bring you home?’
‘Thyself, my beauty!’ cried the woman. ‘I’m safe, I reckon, in wanting to have only my Ninnie-Dinnie brought back to me. She is better than all the lark’s music an’ the Pool’s shine, isn’t she?’ appealing to Tom, who nodded his head. ‘An’ we don’t want no Daddy Skavarnak here no more, do we?’
‘I should think not,’ cried the miner.
‘Mammie Trebisken’s request was a downright sensible one this time, wasn’t it?’ he remarked to the little maid as they walked away from the cottage.
Ninnie-Dinnie did not answer, which somehow troubled him, and he looked at her curiously.
When the miner and the child had reached the place where she had caught the hare, they stopped and looked about them.
The sun had risen, and was making everything beautiful on the moor—the little pools and all. It was a perfect morning for so late in the autumn. The dwarf furze, now in blossom, was burning like gorse in springtime round the bases of the great grey carns; the bramble-vines were more beautiful than jewels, as they trailed in all their richness of colour over the boulders, and the gossamers lay thick on the turf and brown heather, and shone softly, as only gossamer can. Everything was very still, and there was not wind enough to stir even the blades of grass, nor was there anything on the wing save a seagull floating along on the blue air, and a few gorgeous Red Admirals hovering over their beloved nettles.
For ever so long Tom and the quaint little maid stood still, taking in all the wild, yet soft, beauty of the moors, until the latter broke the silence: