“So they are, but fairies never likes folks to say they don’t believe in ’em. That was how Barker got his bad knee.”
“Go on—tell,” said Loveday.
“Well, ’twas like this: Barker, he was a great lazy fellow what wouldn’t work nor nothing, and he laughed at those that did; and when his father said to him that the buccas put him to shame, he said there wasn’t any, and he said he’d prove it: he’d go to the well where folks said they lived, and where they could hear them working, and he’d listen, and he’d listen, and if he heard them he’d believe in them, but not else. So he went to the well every day, and lay down in the grass close by all day long. And he heard the little buccas as plain as plain; they was digging and shovelling and laughing and talking all the time. But Barker, he wouldn’t tell anybody that he’d heard them, and he went every day and lay down by the well to listen to them, and soon he got to understand their talk, and how long they worked; and when they stopped working they hid away their tools, but they always told where they was going to hide them.”
“That was silly!” said Loveday. “There’s no sense in doing that.”
“Hoosh!” said Aaron nervously; “you’d best be careful what you’m saying. One night Barker heard one little bucca say, ‘I’m going to hide my pick under the ferns.’ ‘I shan’t,’ says another; ‘I shall leave mine on Barker’s knee.’”
“Oh!” gasped Loveday, “then they knew his name. Did they know all the time that he was there listening to them?”
“I reckon so,” said Aaron gravely. “Little people knows everything mostly; that’s why you’ve got to be so careful.”
“Go on,” said Loveday eagerly.
“Well, Barker, he was prettily frightened when he heard that, and he was just going to jump up and run away, when whump! something hit him right on the knee like anything, and oh!” groaned Aaron, his eyes big and round with the excitement of his story, “it ’urt him so he bellowed like a great bull, and he kept on saying, ‘Take ’em away; take them there tools away; take your old pick and shovel off my knee, I tell ’e!’ But the little buccas only laughed, and the more he bellowed, the more they laughed. He tried to get up, but ’twas ever so long before he could, and he had a stiff knee all the rest of his life.”
“Did people know why?” asked Loveday.