‘If I only knew how to fly, how quickly I would get up those stairs!’ said Betty. ‘There is nothing I can do, is there, to get a pair of wings?’ she asked wistfully. ‘Nobody who can help me to get wings?’ she added, as the little white dog seemed to bend his head in thought.
‘Nobody but the Wise Woman of Bogee Down,’ he answered, after considering a few minutes.
‘I have heard of that strange old body,’ said Betty. ‘My mother often told me about her. She is very clever and wise, she said, and used to make simples for sick folks. She is terribly old now—a hundred and twenty, I think she told me.’
‘That or more,’ said the dog. ‘But aged as she is, she is not too aged to work a kindness for anybody that asks her, particularly if it be against the Witch o’ the Well.’
‘Will she help me to get wings, do you think?’ asked Betty eagerly.
‘If it is within her power, I am certain she will,’ returned the little white dog. ‘Why don’t you go and see her, and tell her the old Witch o’ the Well has shut up six dear little maids, who were unfortunate enough to play the game with her a year ago, and that they cannot be set free until you, who acted the “Mother” in the game, can fly up to their rescue?’
‘’Tis a long way to Bogee Down,’ answered Betty, ‘but I’ll go there to-morrow, all the same, if I can.’
‘That is well,’ cried the little white dog. ‘You will not seek her help in vain, I am sure, especially if you tell her the witch’s little white dog Pincher sent you. Now I must be off, for the old witch is up on her broom, and if she should happen to see us talking together, her horrid old cat would sclow[4] our eyes out. Good-bye, dear little Betty, and give thee favour in the sight of the Wise Woman’; and with another wag of his tail he vanished.
Betty hardly slept a wink that night, thinking of her six little friends shut up in the witch’s tower, and so ardently did she desire wings to fly up to their help that she got up and dressed before the sun was risen. He was just rising over the golden towans on the east side of the river as she left her mother’s house for Bogee Down, a wild, picturesque, but lonely tableland about four miles from the ancient town.
It was so early that nobody was up except herself, and the doors of the Crown and Anchor were still closed as she walked over the quay, down the slip, and across the beach to the south quay.