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Suddenly, on the barrow, there mingled with all this wild rhetoric of night a sound which modulated so naturally into the rest that its beginning and ending were hardly to be distinguished. The bluffs, and the bushes, and the heather-bells had broken silence; at last, so did the woman; and her articulation was but as another phrase of the same discourse as theirs.
For, of course, you all understand," she continued bending forward so that her eyes shone, growing very large, and at the same moment black and bright "you all know that the great heather-plants are the last homes left in England for the fairies. The fairies live in the heather-bells; and during the winter, when the heather is dead, the poor fairies are cold, being turned out of their homes."
These animals, their habits, their miraculous transformations, might give many an hour's quiet amusement to an invalid, laid on a sofa, or imprisoned in a sick-room, and debarred from reading, unless by some such means, any page of that great green book outside, whose pen is the finger of God, whose covers are the fire kingdoms and the star kingdoms, and its leaves the heather-bells, and the polypes of the sea, and the gnats above the summer stream.
"Do you know Dickon?" Mary asked, turning round rather in a hurry. "Everybody knows him. Dickon's wanderin' about everywhere. Th' very blackberries an' heather-bells knows him. I warrant th' foxes shows him where their cubs lies an' th' skylarks doesn't hide their nests from him." Mary would have liked to ask some more questions.
"Do you know Dickon?" Mary asked, turning round rather in a hurry. "Everybody knows him. Dickon's wanderin' about everywhere. Th' very blackberries an' heather-bells knows him. I warrant th' foxes shows him where their cubs lies an' th' skylarks doesn't hide their nests from him." Mary would have liked to ask some more questions.
"Where do they go, then, I wonder?" asked a muffled voice in the darkened circle of listeners. "Back to the fairies' palace, of course, underground," said Betty. "But they like the world best, they're such sociable little darlings; and when the heather-bells are coming out they all return, and each fairy takes possession of a bell and lives there. She makes it her home.
Up here on the heath it was different from down there, but it was very nice. It was covered with heather-bells and bilberries; they were so large and so sweet; one could mash them with one's foot, so that the heather should be dripping with the red juice.
Flowers were everywhere-common garden flowers of old-fashioned kinds, for the owner hated exotics, and in a shallow silver bowl in the midst of the snowy table-cloth was a great mass of purple heather-bells. Three very hungry young men sat down to their morning meal with a hearty goodwill. The host began to rummage among his correspondence, and finally extracted an unstamped note, which he opened.
"Little bee, buzzing about in the air, For once be not busy, a moment pray spare, And tell me, pray tell me, how honey you make From the flowerets of garden, soft meadow, and brake. You rise with the sun, and your gossamer wing Bears you swiftly away where the heather-bells spring; Whence you come heavy laden with nectary spoil, For the sweet winter stores of your summer of toil. "Oh!
Debby shook her head with an energy that set the pink heather-bells a-tremble in her hair, and her color deepened beautifully as she said, with reproachful eyes, "Aunt Pen, I think there is a better fashion in every young girl's heart than any Madame Tiphany can teach.
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