“If the truth were told,” he said in a huff, “I should fancy I’m twice as much use as you are. The farmers couldn’t get on without me. I look after the horses, and help to rub the poor beasts down when they come home tired at the end of the day; I stir their food so that it agrees with them, and scare off the grey goblins who might put it into their heads to work no more at the plough. And I’m as good to the farmers’ wives as an extra maid, even if I do take my pay in a drink of cream. I dance my shadow on the wall to amuse the children if they are fretful, and tell them stories when the wind moans down the chimney and would frighten them if it could. And I pinch their toes when they are naughty, and hide the playthings they leave about.”
He looked so much in earnest while he told me all this, and so very good, that I was beginning to think he was not half so mischievous as Puck, when he gave a funny little chuckle, and rubbed his hands.
“Such fun as I have with the fishermen!” he cried. “If they forget to cross themselves with holy water before they go to sea, I fill their nets with heavy stones, or entice away the fish. When the fancy takes me, I change myself into the form of a handsome young man, and if folks do not then treat me with proper respect, and call me ‘Bon Garçon’ civilly, I pelt them with stones until they run! Their wives and daughters are always gentle to poor Nain Rouge, however; and when I can, I do them a good turn. Shall I tell you how I consoled the fair Marguerite when she wept? Then listen well!”
“A favourite haunt of mine,” began Nain Rouge, “is a little fishing village, close to Dieppe. The maidens there are more to my mind than those on any other part of the coast; their skin is like clear pale amber, warmed into redness where the sun has kissed it, and their eyes—ah! you should see them! The fairest of all was Marguerite, and often I sat for hours on her window-sill to watch her at her spinning. Etienne would come and watch her too, and he thought, foolish lad, that her angel-face meant an angel temper; but I knew she had a tongue.
And such a tongue! It was like the brook, for it never stopped, and she said such sharp and bitter things that the love of her friends withered up as they heard them, just as spring lilies droop before a cruel East wind. Etienne was a stranger, or he would have known better than to woo her seriously. Strange to relate, the wayward maid was different from the day he came. I had never known her so soft and sweet, and the neighbours said that surely some good fairy had laid her under a spell.
Etienne and she were wed one summer morning, but the little new moon had not shone in the heavens a second time when there was trouble between them. Marguerite’s tongue was sharper than ever from its long rest, and Etienne could not believe it belonged to his ‘angel’ bride. He left the cottage without a word, and when he came back his mouth was grim, for his mates had hastened to make things worse by telling him many tales. A foolish man was Etienne, or he would not have heeded them; but that is neither here nor there.
From this time on he made as though he were deaf when Marguerite railed at him, and he took her no more to his breast when he came back from the sea. And Marguerite grieved, for she loved him well in her woman’s way, and longed for his caresses. The sight of his pale set face, and his sombre eyes—they were like the eyes of a dog in pain, when the hand he loves best has struck him—stung her to fresh taunts, and there came a day when he answered her back in the same way, and all but struck her. Ah! a woman’s tongue can do rare mischief! His mother had never heard an ugly word from him.