To complete the little scene of rural peace and comfort, a girl of about
five years old was fetching water in a pitcher from a beautiful fountain
of the purest transparency, which bubbled up at the root of a decayed old
oak-tree about twenty yards from the end of the cottage.
The stranger reined up his horse and called to the little nymph, desiring
to know the way to Fairy Knowe. The child set down her water-pitcher,
hardly understanding what was said to her, put her fair flaxen hair apart
on her brows, and opened her round blue eyes with the wondering "What's
your wull?" which is usually a peasant's first answer, if it can be
called one, to all questions whatever.
"I wish to know the way to Fairy Knowe."
"Mammie, mammie," exclaimed the little rustic, running towards the door
of the hut, "come out and speak to the gentleman."
Her mother appeared,--a handsome young country-woman, to whose features,
originally sly and espiegle in expression, matrimony had given that
decent matronly air which peculiarly marks the peasant's wife of
Scotland. She had an infant in one arm, and with the other she smoothed
down her apron, to which hung a chubby child of two years old. The elder
girl, whom the traveller had first seen, fell back behind her mother as
soon as she appeared, and kept that station, occasionally peeping out to
look at the stranger.
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