Long Legs to make a fence with his legs, or dwelt upon a terrible
fight between two armies of elves mounted on grasshoppers and
crickets, and armed with lances tipped with stings of bees and
wasps, she would exclaim, "Is it true, Perry?" and he would wink his
green eye and look at her with his yellow one till she hardly knew
where she was.

He would tell of his putting a hornet in a sluttish maid's shoe,
which was credible, if scarcely meriting that elfish laughter which
made his auditor shrink, but when he told of dancing over the mud
banks with a lantern, like a Will-of-the-wisp, till he lured boats
to get stranded, or horsemen to get stuck, in the hopeless mud, Anne
never questioned the possibility, but listened with wide open eyes,
and a restrained shudder, feeling as if under a spell. That
mysterious childish feeling which dreads even what common sense
forbids the calmer mind to believe, made her credit Peregrine, for
the time at least, with strange affinities to the underground folk,
and kept her under a strange fascination, half attraction, half
repulsion, which made her feel as if she must obey and follow him if
he turned those eyes on her, whether she were willing or not.

Nor did she ever tell her mother of these conversations. She had
been rebuked once for repeating nurse's story of the changeling, and
again for her shrinking from him; and this was quite enough in an
essentially reserved, as well as proud and sensitive, nature, to
prevent further confidences on a subject which she knew would be
treated as a foolish fancy, bringing both herself and her companion
into trouble.