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If one could always hold one’s tongue as to what one sees, one would be the better for it. They are the wise people of this world who keep silence as to what they see; many such there are who behold things such as neither you nor I may ever hope to look upon, and yet we know nothing of this because they say nothing of it, going their own ways like common folks, and as though they saw nothing in an egg but the meat.

Dame Margery Twist of Tavistock town was not one of these wise folks who hold their tongues; she was a good, gossiping, chattering old soul, whose hen never hatched a chick but all of the neighbors knew of it, as the saying goes. The poor old creature had only one eye; how she lost the other you shall presently hear, and also how her wonderful tulip garden became like anybody else’s tulip garden.

Dame Margery Twist lived all alone with a great tabby cat. She dwelt in a little cottage that stood back from the road, and just across the way from the butcher’s shop. All within was as neat and as bright as a new pin, so that it was a delight just to look upon the row of blue dishes upon the dresser, the pewter pipkins as bright as silver, or the sanded floor, as clean as your mother’s table. Over the cottage twined sweet woodbines, so that the air was ladened with their fragrance in the summer-time, when the busy, yellow-legged bees droned amid the blossoms from the two hives that stood along against the wall. But the wonder of the garden was the tulip bed, for there were no tulips in all England like them, and folks came from far and near, only to look upon them and to smell their fragrance. They stood in double rows, and were of all colors–white, yellow, red, purple, and pied. They bloomed early, and lasted later than any others, and, when they were in flower, all the air was filled with their perfume.

Now all of these things happened before the smoke of the factories and the rattling of the steam-cars had driven the fairy folks away from this world into No-man’s-land, and this was the secret of the dame’s fine tulip bed. For the fairies dwelt among the flowers, and she often told her gossips how that she could hear the fairy mothers singing their babies to sleep at night, when the moon was full and the evening was warm. She had never seen the little folks herself, for few folks are given to look upon them, and Dame Margery’s eyes were not of that nature. Nevertheless, she heard them, and that, in my opinion, is the next best thing to seeing them.

Dame Margery Twist, as I said, was a good, kind, comfortable old soul, and was, moreover, the best nurse in all of Tavistock town. Was any one ill, it was Dame Margery who was called upon to attend him; as for the dame herself, she was always ready to bring a sick body into good health again, and was always paid well for the nursing.

Then, lo and behold! who should she see, gliding here and there among the crowd of other people, but the little man in green whom she had seen a year ago. She opened her eyes mightily wide, for she saw that he was doing a strange thing. By his side hung a little earthenware pot, and in his hand he held a little wooden scraper, which he passed over the rolls of butter, afterwards putting that which he scraped from the rolls into the pot that hung beside him. Dame Margery peeped into the pot, and saw that it was half full; then she could contain herself no longer.

“Hey-day, neighbor!” cried she, “here be pretty doings, truly! Out upon thee, to go scraping good luck and full measure off of other folks’ butter!”

When the little man in green heard the dame speak to him, he was so amazed that he nearly dropped his wooden scraper. “Why, Dame Margery! can you see me then?”

“Aye, marry can I! And what you are about doing also; out upon you, say I!”

“And did you not rub your eyes with the red salve then?” said the little man.

“One eye, yes, but one eye, no,” said the dame, slyly.

“Which eye do you see me with?” said he.

“With this eye, gossip, and very clearly, I would have you know,” and she pointed to her right eye.

Then the little man swelled out his cheeks until they were like two little brown dumplings. Puff! he blew a breath into the good dame’s eye. Puff! he blew, and if the dame’s eye had been a candle, the light of it could not have gone out sooner.

The dame felt no smart, but she might wink and wink, and wink again, but she would never wink sight into the eye upon which the little man had blown his breath, for it was blind as the stone wall back of the mill, where Tom the tinker kissed the miller’s daughter.

Dame Margery Twist never greatly missed the sight of that eye; but all the same, I would give both of mine for it.

All of these things are told at Tavistock town even to this day; and if you go thither, you may hear them for yourself.

But I say again, as I said at first: if one could
only hold one’s tongue as to what one sees,
one would be the better for it.