The old woman had drawn a stool to the fire and was sitting there facing it, the reflection casting a pleasant glow on her sunburnt cheeks and keen bright eyes. She was always a nice-looking old woman, but just now she really looked quite pretty.
'How fond you are of the fire, Nance,' said Archie; 'do you have one all the year round?'
'Mostly so, Master Archie,' she replied. 'You see old folk like me grow chilly. It's not often I feel too hot, even in the midsummer days. And here on the moorside there's always a breeze more or less. Yes, I love my bit o' fire, Master Archie—you're about right there, but all the same I'd rather face cold than be choked in a town and have no fresh air, like some poor things have to bear their lives.'
'Nance,' said Miss Mouse suddenly; she had been sitting silent watching Bob's granny, 'it's so funny, it seems to me that when you stretch out your hands to the flames they give a little jump towards you and then dance up the chimney ever so much higher than before. Are you a sort of a fairy, dear Nance?'
Pat glanced at the little girl half uneasily. He knew that some of the people about called Mrs. Crag a witch, and 'uncanny,' and words like that, just because she was a stranger and different in her ways and looks from her present neighbours, and he was afraid that Nance's feelings might be hurt by little Rosamond's question.
But it was not so—on the contrary the old woman seemed pleased, and smiled brightly.
'You must have a bit of the fairy knowing yourself, missie dear, to have noticed it,' she said. 'I've been told I get it from my grandmother, who had fairy ways, there's no denying. And no harm in them either, if one doesn't think too much of them, or fancy oneself more than one is. But I've always had a kind of luck, hand-in-hand with troubles, for troubles I've had, and many of them, in my long life. More than once when I've thought they'd be too much for me there's come a turn I had little hope of. Maybe the good people aren't gone so far as we think, after all,' and old Nance smiled at the idea.
'Tell us some story of your good luck,' said Pat suddenly. 'It's always so nice to hear a story from the person it really happened to.'
Nance considered. Then she suddenly slipped her hand inside the front of her bodice and drew out a tiny little chain; it was only a steel chain, but very finely worked, so that it looked more like a silver thread, and on it hung a tiny coin with a hole in it through which a ring had been passed. She held it out for the children to see.
'Oh what a weeny, weeny little sixpenny, or threepenny—which is it?' exclaimed Rosamond.