She had not far to walk, and it so happened that her way led through the identical lane in which she had met the fairy. Wonderful to relate, there, on the very same stone and in precisely the same attitude, sat the old lady, peering out from under her poke-bonnet, and resting her knotty old hands on her crutch-handled stick!
Priscilla walked past with her head in the air, pretending not to notice her, for she considered that the fairy had played her a most malicious and ill-natured trick.
'Heyday!' said the old lady (it is only fairies who can permit themselves such old-fashioned expressions nowadays). 'Heyday, why, here's my good little girl again! Isn't she going to speak to me?'
'No, she's not,' said Priscilla—but she found herself compelled to stop, notwithstanding.
'Why, what's all this about? You're not going to sulk with me, my dear, are you?'
'I think you're a very cruel, bad, unkind old woman for deceiving me like this!'
'Goodness me! Why, didn't the jewels come, after all?'
'Yes—they came, only they were all horrid artificial ones—and it is a shame, it is!' cried poor Priscilla from her bursting heart.
'Artificial, were they? that really is very odd! Can you account for that at all, now?'
'Of course I can't! You told me that they would drop out whenever I said anything to improve people—and I was always saying something improving! Aunt had a bandbox in her room quite full of them.'