"I'm sure I don't know," Elsie replied, wondering how much she dared say to this girl, and with a recollection of the "fairy mother's" threats.
"Do you know where mamma is?" she asked, cautiously.
The girl burst out laughing. "You needn't come that here," she said. "We know her and him well enough, both of them. They wasn't always such grand folk, I can tell you. Why, Lucy Murdoch is as well known down Stony Close as ever I am. Her mother lived next to mine, and does to this day, and holds her head so high, on account of her daughter, that she'd like to pass mother in the street if she dared. If you belong to her, it's news to me, and I've known her all my life." All this was said with the quaint expressions and broad northern dialect that Elsie very well understood, although none but a Scottish lassie would do so.
"I don't think you like her much," Elsie said.
The girl made a wry grimace. "I like any one so long as they don't do me no harm," she replied evasively. "She wouldn't stand at that, either, if she had the mind. How did you get with her?"
Elsie pondered a moment, and then decided she would tell this girl everything, and trust to her being a friend.
"She found us on a road by the mountains, oh! ever so far away from here; and she seemed so kind, and brought us clothes, and took us to a nice house to sleep, and brought us in the train all this way," Elsie said.
"H'm," the girl said, looking rather puzzled. "Well, she'd got her reasons," she added presently. "I don't know what they might be, but it wasn't done for any good to you. What did they bring you here for?"
"I don't know," Elsie replied.
"You see, master's in all their secrets. He's one with them, and does a lot of business with them. To tell you the truth—which you needn't let out, unless you want to have your head smashed—he's master's brother, only he goes under another name. Now, what did he tell you his name was?"