"I suspect that Jimmy had drunk too much cider," said Lady Eleanor severely; "he should have kept sober or stuck to the road, and then he would not have brought back foolish stories about pixies and witches. I wonder that you can believe in such things."
"I know mun too well, my Lady," said Mrs. Fry mournfully. "There was my pig back in the spring, so rasonable a pig as ever ate mate, until the white witch to Gratton overlooked mun. And I never did the white witch no harm, nor the pig didn't neither; but as they was driving the pig along the road—and you know what pigs is, driving, my Lady,—the white witch comes riding on his one-eyed donkey; and the pig runned against the donkey, and the old man[1] muttered something or 'nother—"
"But the old man is dead, I was told," said Lady Eleanor.
"'Eas fai! and so he is, my Lady, and a terrible job they had to bury mun—thunder, lightning and hailstones so big as sloes. Dead he is, and I won't jidge mun—but not afore he'd a doed the mischief, for but three weeks afterward my pig falls into the mill-leat. So there's my pig a drownded, and my Tommy so dumb as a haddock—can't go to school, can't do nought but ate his mate and sit in the corner for all the world like a moulting hen. Ah, they witches! I wish they was a-burned, I do." And she hid her face in her apron and sobbed.
"Hush, hush!" said Lady Eleanor gently; but just then she was startled by a little cry from Elsie; and there was Dick, who had just leaped his pony over a low bar, tilted right forward on the pony's neck. "Sit fast, sir, sit fast," cried the Corporal, as Dick floundered to regain his seat; and with a desperate effort the boy recovered himself and sat up, flushed and smiling. Elsie clapped her hands with delight, and a strange man's voice shouted "Bravo!" at the sound of which Lady Eleanor started and coloured for a moment.
"'Tis surely his lordship from Fitzdenys Court," said Mrs. Fry, who had lowered her apron a little. "'Eas, 'tis. Now, my Lady, do 'ee plase to spake to mun about my Tommy; for it's a poor job if his lordship can't do something for the boy, and he the lord-lieutenant as can call out the milishy any time."
And as she spoke two gentlemen came cantering up through the park; so Lady Eleanor bade Mrs. Fry take Tommy to the back-door and get something for him and herself to eat.
[1] It is a fallacy to suppose that a white witch, in Devon, at any rate, is necessarily a woman. The few that I have known were men.