"Brownies?" laughed the dame. "Ay, Master, I have heard of them. When I
was a girl, in service at the old hall, on Cowberry Edge, I heard a
good deal of one they said had lived there in former times. He did
house-work as well as a woman, and a good deal quicker, they said. One
night one of the young ladies (that were then, they're all dead now)
hid herself in a cupboard, to see what he was like."

"And what was he like?" inquired the Tailor, as composedly as he was
able.

"A little fellow, they said," answered the Farmer's wife, knitting
calmly on. "Like a dwarf, you know, with a largish head for his body.
Not taller than--why, my Bill, or your eldest boy, perhaps. And he was
dressed in rags, with an old cloak on, and stamping with passion at a
cobweb he couldn't get at with his broom. They've very uncertain
tempers, they say. Tears one minute, and laughing the next."

"You never had one here, I suppose?" said the Tailor.

"Not we," she answered; "and I think I'd rather not. They're not canny
after all; and my master and me have always been used to work, and
we've sons and daughters to help us, and that's better than meddling
with the Fairies, to my mind. No! no!" she added, laughing, "if we had
had one you'd have heard of it, whoever didn't, for I should have had
some decent clothes made for him. I couldn't stand rags and old cloaks,
messing and moth-catching, in my house."

"They say it's not lucky to give them clothes, though," said the
Tailor; "they don't like it."