It sleeps outside in the night.”
“I’ll never guess it; tell it to me now, alanna,” begged her sister.
“If your blue eyes could see the little path under your feet you would see the answer,” replied Kathleen, as she led the blind child carefully over the steep pathway to the long stone slab where they loved to play. “We’ll sit here a bit,” she added, and drew Mary Ellen down beside her on the stone.
“Now tell me why you put the dish of stirabout under the hawthorn bush last night, and what became of it,” asked the child, who could wait no longer for the story.
“It was for the leprecaun,” Kathleen told her. “He is the fairy shoemaker, and he sits under the hedge all day tapping away on an old shoe. He wears a scarlet cap and a green coat, and there are two rows of buttons on his coat, with seven buttons in each row. He has a fairy purse which is filled with gold, and he puts it down beside him on the grass while he works; but he is always watching it. If I could just see him once and hold his eye for a minute, I could snatch the purse of gold and run away with it.”
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
“The old grandmother was spinning at the door”
The cottage is of stone, plastered and whitewashed [ Page 1]
“Did you ever see him?” whispered Mary Ellen.