“It is so cold, Nance,” said the boy, as he settled himself by the fire. Nance’s fires always burnt so bright and clear.
“Yes,” said Nance, “the snow is coming, Connemara.”
“I don’t care,” said Con, shaking his shaggy fair hair out of his eyes, for the heat was melting the icicles upon it. “I’m not going to hurry. Father and mother are away for two days, so there’s no one to miss me. Mayn’t I stay, Nance?”
Nance did not answer. She went to the door and looked out, and Con thought he heard her whisper something to herself. Immediately a blast of wind came rushing down the hill, into the very room it seemed to Con. Nance closed the door. “Not long; the storm is coming,” she said again, in answer to his question.
But in the meantime Con made himself very comfortable by the fire, amusing himself as usual by staring into its glowing depths.
“Nance,” he said at last, “do you know what the boys at school say? They say they wonder I’m not afraid of you! They say you’re a witch, Nance!”
He looked up in her face brightly with his fearless blue eyes, and laughed so merrily that all the corners of the queer little cottage seemed to echo it back. Nance, however, only smiled.
“If you were a witch, Nance, I’d make you grant me some wishes, three anyway,” he went on. “Of course you know what the first would be, and, indeed, if I had that, I don’t know that I would want any other. I mean, to go to fairyland, you know.”
Nance nodded her head.
“The other two would be for it to be always summer, and for me never, never, never to have any lessons to learn,” he continued.