"Now then," Grannie would begin, "if I'm boun' to tell you t' tale o'
Janet's Cove, you mun set yoursels down an' be whisht. Tak a seat at t'
top o' bag o' provand, Kester; Betty and Will can hug chairs to t' fire,
and lile Joe Moon mun sit on t' end o' t' bed."

Such was Grannie's arrangement of the seats, while to me, the visitor,
was assigned the "lang-settle" on the other side of the fireplace. It
was a coign of vantage which I shared with the ancestral copper
warming-pan, and from it I could see the whole group. Grannie, bent
half-double with rheumatism, was propped up in her bed, with the
children grouped around her. She wore, as usual, her white mutch cap and
grey shawl. Mittens covered her wrists, and her fingers, painfully
swollen with chalk-stones, plied her knitting-needles. Her face was
sunken in the cheeks and round her mouth, but her large brown eyes,
still full of animation, broad forehead, and high-arched brows gave
dignity and even beauty to her pale countenance. On the fire the
porridge was warming for the calves' supper, while suspended from the
wooden ceiling was the "bread-flake," a hurdle-shaped structure across
the bars of which hung the pieces of oatcake which were eaten with
buttermilk at supper.

"Well, I've happen telled you afore," Grannie began, "that when I were a
lile lass I lived up Malham way. My father had a farm close agen Gordale
Scar. Eh! but it's a fearful queer country is yon! Gert nabs o' rock on
all sides wheer nobbut goats can clim, an' becks flowin' undergrund an'
then bubblin' up i' t' crofts an' meadows. On t' other side frae our
steading were a cove that fowks called Janet's Cove. They telled all
maks an' manders o' tales about t' cove an' reckoned it were plagued wi'
boggards. But they couldn't keep me out o' t' cove for all that; 'twere