"No fear, no fear," replied her hostess, and as Clodagh sat down in the comfortable chintz-covered old armchair—the landlady's own, which she drew forward for the unexpected guest—the girl gave a sigh of content. "It is nice and cool in here," she said, "and I am so tired already and so thirsty. I wish I were going to stay here for a bit."
"Indeed and I wish it too, Miss, and it's our best we'd do to make you comfortable," said the dame, as she bustled about to make the tea, which she fetched from the kitchen hard by, and to cut some tempting slices of bread and butter. "But travelling's very pleasant, some folks say. There's an old lady not far from here—that's to say, her own home is—but she's for ever on the go. They do say as she's been all over the world, and old as she is, she seldom rests."
"Is she so very old?" asked Clodagh.
"No one knows," was the mysterious reply. "My husband's mother, and she's no chicken as you can fancy, remembers her as quite aged when she was young. But she never seems to get no older. Some say she was spirited away by the good folk when she was a baby and that she's got a fairy's life—indeed there's some that will have it she's not really one of us at all."
Clodagh, by this time refreshed by the tea, sat up eagerly. "Oh," she exclaimed, "I'm so glad you talk of the good folk. I thought it was only at home—in Ireland, I mean, that people still believed in them."
"Dear me, no," said her hostess, with a smile. "Maybe in the big towns you never hear of them nowadays, and no wonder. They can't abide noise and bustle and dirt. But in these parts, oh dear yes. I've heard tell of them all my life, I know, and of their tricksy ways. They can be the best of friends, but, my word! if they take offence they can worry one's life out."
Clodagh was listening with all her ears. Her eyes had grown brighter, and some colour had come into her cheeks, with the mere mention of fairy folk, so familiar to her since her infancy.
"Oh," she said with a little sigh, "what you say does make me wish still more that I could stay here a few days and get rested, and you would tell me stories, as my dear old nurse used to do."
"That I would," said the landlady, "and indeed I wish you could stay to hear them. Not that I've ever really come across the fairies—brownies and pixies, they call them in some parts—myself, nor even set eyes on one of them—unless indeed——" and here she stopped abruptly, lowering her voice.
"Unless what?" asked Clodagh. "Do tell me."