“Oh!” she replied, “I never had a real faddel and muddel.”
As she was going away she said,—
“You may tiss me, and tome and see me.”
I could not see my way to kiss so black a face, but I promised to go and see her at her “faddel’s” cottage. I did so in an hour, but only to find the mystery that hung around my little gnome deepened.
My little gnome was a gnome no more, but a fairy, washed and clean and neatly dressed, and with a wealth of sunny hair floating over her shoulders. The miner himself was clean, too, and the cottage was the pink of tidiness and order. There were even flowers in vases, and a canary in a gilded cage hanging in the window.
Though I stayed and talked for quite a long time, I did not succeed in solving the mystery.
“She ain’t ours, sir, little Looie ain’t,” said the sturdy miner. “Come to us in a queer way, but lo! sir, how we does love her, to be sure!”