"What! Soldiers quartered on us!" cried the good people of Langaffer. "Who ever heard the like?"
"They shall not come to my house!" exclaimed Farmer Fairweather resolutely.
"Oh, neighbour Fairweather!" shouted half a dozen voices, "and thou hast such barns and lofts, and such very fine stables, and cowsheds, thou art the very one who canst easily harbour the soldiers."
"As for me," cried the miller, "I have barely room for my meal-sacks!"
"Oh, plenty of room!" screamed the others, "and flour to make bread for the troopers, and bran for the horses!"
"But it falls very hard on poor people like us!" cried the weaver, the tinker, the cobbler and tailor; upon which little Wattie raised his voice and began, "Shame on ye, good neighbours! Do ye grudge hospitality to the warriors who go forth to shed their blood in our defence? Every man, who has strength of body and limb, ought to feel it an honour to afford food and shelter to the army of the land!"
"Thy advice is cheap, Wattie!" cried several voices sarcastically, "thou and thy tiny wife escape all this trouble finely. For the general would as soon dream of quartering a soldier on dwarfs as on the sparrows that live on the housetops!"
"And what if we are small," retorted Wattie, waxing scarlet, "we have never shirked from our duty yet, and never intend to do so."
This boast of the little man's had the effect of silencing some of the most dissatisfied; and then the people of Langaffer dispersed for the night, every head being full of the morrow's preparations.
"Eh, Wattie dear," said Mattie to her husband, when the two were retiring to sleep in their cosy little house, "we may bless ourselves this night that we are not reckoned amongst the big people, and that our cottage is so small no full-grown stranger would try to enter it."