To the heart that’s true,
To the heart that knew
’Twas better to give than to keep my pednpaley.’
As she was singing, Joan saw her glance over her shoulder at the Pail, which was all one shine on the dresser, and which, as she looked, left the dresser and came towards the fireplace and hopped into the costan!
As the last words of the song died away into the silence of the fire-lighted room, the little old woman in the bal-bonnet lifted the bramble-basket on to her back and glided out of the cottage as she had entered it; and the crippled woman, as she followed her with her eyes, saw hundreds and hundreds of dear Little People coming down the moor to meet her, singing and dancing as they came, and waving little white lights tipped with red stars, very much like the one that had shone from the Pail. When they came to where she stood they formed a ring around the quaint bent little figure with the costan on her back; and then she disappeared, and Joan saw in the centre of the ring, as the Wee Folk twirled in their dance, two tiny Little People more beautiful than all the rest—one of which she was sure was her Ninnie-Dinnie and the other the fairy who, in the form of a little old woman in a blue-grey cloak and a mine-maiden’s bonnet, had brought her to her cottage that never-to-be-forgotten autumn evening.
Joan missed Ninnie-Dinnie dreadfully at first; but from the evening she gave her back, the rheumatism left her, and she was as well and strong as she was in the first years of her married life. And when autumn came round again, a dear little soft head of her own came to nestle close to her heart, and to make Tom and herself glad the rest of their days. But dear as this little Ninnie-Dinnie was, lovely as they thought her, they did not love her one bit more than that other Ninnie-Dinnie, the Skillywidden of the dear Little People, who were her friends for ever after.
Carn Kenidzhek.