While looking into the dark corner I heard strains of sweet, unearthly music outside the house. Glancing around the room, I saw that all was changed. The walls were hung with tapestry, the chimney stools on which we sat were carved chairs. Betty and I sat under a canopy of embroidered satin, and our feet rested on a silken carpet. And wherever the little Spriggans trod, they left circles like diamonds on the floor.
The sweet music was now close at hand under the little window, and a moment after a troop of the Little People appeared on the window-sill, playing on pipes, flutes, and other instruments made of green reeds from the brook and of shells from the shore.
The Fairy band stepped down most gracefully from the window-sill, and was closely followed by a long train of little men and women magnificently dressed, and carrying bunches of flowers in their hands. All walked in an orderly procession, two by two, and bowed or curtsied, to Betty, and cast the flowers in her lap. I saw their many bunches of Four-leaved Clover and sprigs of magic herbs. With these she makes her salves and lotions.
Then all the Spriggans who had been dancing and capering about the ceiling and floor joined the others and came crowding around Betty. She did not look surprised, and I did not say anything to let her know that I saw. The Spriggans then began to pour dew over her dress out of flower-buds and from the bottles of the Foxglove. Immediately her jacket was changed into the finest and richest cloth of a soft cream colour, and her dress became velvet the colour of all the flowers, and it was draped over a petticoat of silk quilted with silver cord.
The Little People brought tiny nosegays of sky-blue Pimpernel, Forget-me-nots, and dainty flower-bells, blue, pink, and white, and hundreds of other Fairy blossoms like stars and butterflies. These delicate little sprigs they stitched all over Betty’s silver-corded petticoat together with branching moss and the lace-like tips of the wild grass. All around the bottom of her skirt they made a wreath of tiny bramble leaves with roses and berries, red and black.
Many of the Little People perched themselves on the top of the high-backed chair in which Betty sat, and even stood on her shoulders, so that they might arrange her every curl and every hair. Some took the lids off pretty little urns they carried in their hands, and poured perfume on her head, which spread the sweetest odours through the room. I very much admired the lovely little urns, with their grooved lids, but when I picked one up, it was only a seed-pod of the wild Poppy. They placed no other ornament in her hair except a small twig of holly full of bright red berries. Yet Betty, decked out by her Fairy friends, was more beautiful than the loveliest Queen of May.
My senses were overcome by the smell of the Fairy odours, and the scent of the flowers, and the sweet perfume of honey, with which the walls of the house seemed bursting. And my head fell forward and I slept.
How long I dozed I do not know, but when I woke I saw that all the little Spriggans were glaring at me angrily. They thrust out their tongues and made the most horrid grimaces. I was so frightened that I jumped up, and ran out of the house, and shut the door.
But for the life of me, I could not leave the place without taking another peep. I put my left eye to the latch-hole—and would you believe it?—the house was just as it was when I entered it; the floor was bare, and there sat Betty in her old clothes before the fire. Then I winked, and looked with the right eye, and there was the beautiful room, and Betty seated in her fine flower-gown, beneath the silken canopy, while all the little Spriggans were dancing and capering around her.
I tore myself away, glad to get out of the cove, and hurried to Penzance to do my shopping, although it was so late. And as I was standing in front of a booth, what should I see but a little Spriggan helping himself to hanks of yarn, stockings, and all sorts of fine things.