That was true. I asked him if any one was there.
"A lady, yes."
"That's the minx," I whispered. "She's a fairy. But don't tell my husband. You know he laughs at me for being so superstitious."
"Indeed. Fact is, Mrs. Smith, she was bathing, and George insisted, most stupidly I think, on watering his horse at that pool. I mounted guard, with my back turned, of course, and tried to persuade the good man to water his horse elsewhere. He couldn't see any sanguinary lady in the rosy pool, and you know the poor fellow has but a very meager choice of words. He reviled me, and my progenitors, and if you'll believe me, my dear mother was not at all the sort of person George described. He made me feel so plain, too, with his candor about my personal appearance. And all that time, while George made my flesh creep with his comments, the lady in the pool was splashing me. I'm still quite damp."
"Did the horse see?"
"Do horses wink, Mrs. Smith? Do they smile? Can they blush? The Graces shook their robes above our heads, the squirrels gossiped, the rippled pool caught glints from the rising sun, and a flight of humming-birds came whirring, as though they had been thrown in George's face. Them sanguinary birds, he said, was always getting in the ruddy way. As to the old horse, he kicked up his heels and pranced off sidewise down the glen, and the man followed, rumbling benedictions."
I explained that my dear husband can not see the minx, that my servant dare not look.
"I doubt," said Father Jared, with regret, "that very few fairies nowadays are superstitious enough to believe in us poor mortals."
For that I could have kissed him.
"They used," the dear old man went on, "to believe in our forefathers, but there is a very general decline of faith. It is not for us to blame them. What fairy, for example, could be expected to believe in Tearful George? He chews tobacco."