“Farises?”
“He means the fairies, sir,” interpreted one of the women, a mite of a person sitting on the edge of her chair, with a wisp of tartan colour at the throat of her black lady’s maid’s uniform.
“Eh? Oh, Ardelia, thanks,” exclaimed Pendleton, while the stableman Morgan mumbled something about the propriety of a “not Welshly person’s” keeping still, and one of the two handsome women gave her small fellow-servant an unsisterly look and ejaculated, “Hop-o’-my-thumb!”
“Go on, Morgan,” bade Pendleton, quieting a general stir.
The ensuing account was full of omens and transformation, of black calves and fairy ovens, of wizard marks, sucking pigs, “low winds,” and horses ridden by the “goblin trot” in stables at night.
“Great Scott, man! Do you believe all this?”
The “London servants” and those from other parts tittered.
Morgan seemed to be weighing his words. “Well, that be hard to say, sir.”
“What’s hard about it? Don’t you know what believing is?”
“Right well I do, sir, but—”