‘The witch may crow like an evil bird now,’ cried the Wise Woman when Betty told her what the witch had said; ‘but I shall hope to live to hear her screech like a whitnick[5] before that time has passed.’
When the little maid had undone her bundle, and put away her small belongings, the old woman told her to go to the settle, which stood by the fireplace, and take out from its seat a little bag of feathers, and separate one from the other and lay them on the table.
‘That will be an easy thing to do,’ said Betty to herself; and lifting the seat, she found a dinky bag stuffed full of feathers, rainbow-coloured, but so matted together that they were nothing but a soft ball.
‘P’r’aps this is to make me a pair of wings,’ said Betty; and seating herself on the settle, she set to work with a will.
But the feathers were not easily disentangled, as she soon found, and when evening came she had only succeeded in disentangling one tiny feather from the matted mass.
The Wise Woman neither looked nor spoke to her until the sun sank down behind the downs, when she told her to return the bag to its place in the settle, and then get her supper and her own and go to bed.
‘I have only got one little feather to put on the table,’ said poor little Betty, when she had put the bag back into its place.
‘You have done better than I feared,’ said the Wise Woman quietly. ‘It is something to have untangled even one feather from its companions. It is a sign that it is quite possible that you may be able to fly.’
When they had had their supper, which consisted of black bread and goat’s milk, Betty lay down in a bed made of dried grass and bracken, in the corner of the room, and slept the sleep of well-doing.
‘It will take me a whole year to untangle all these feathers,’ said the little maid to herself the next day, when she again sat down to her task, which she did when she had got her own and the Wise Woman’s breakfast, and had swept and sanded the hut. ‘’Tis dreary work, sure ‘nough!’