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“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.”

“Tell me!” said the dame, “as if any one that liked a tidy room wouldn’t like tidy clothes, if they could get them. No! no! when we have one, you shall take his measure, I promise you.”

And this was all the Tailor got out of her on the subject. When his work was finished, the Farmer paid him at once; and the good dame added half a cheese, and a bottle-green coat.

“That has been laid by for being too small for the master now he’s so stout,” she said; “but except for a stain or two it’s good enough, and will cut up like new for one of the lads.”

The Tailor thanked them, and said farewell, and went home. Down the valley, where the river, wandering between the green banks and the sandy rocks, was caught by giant mosses, and bands of fairy fern, and there choked and struggled, and at last barely escaped with an existence, and ran away in a diminished stream. On up the purple hills to the old ruined house. As he came in at the gate he was struck by some idea of change, and looking again, he saw that the garden had been weeded, and was comparatively tidy. The truth is, that Tommy and Johnnie had taken advantage of the Tailor’s absence to do some Brownie’s work in the daytime.

“It’s that Blessed Brownie!” said the Tailor. “Has he been as usual?” he asked, when he was in the house.

“To be sure,” said the old lady; “all has been well, son Thomas.”

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said the Tailor, after a pause. “I’m a needy man, but I hope I’m not ungrateful. I can never repay the Brownie for what he has done for me and mine; but the mistress up yonder has given me a bottle-green coat that will cut up as good as new; and as sure as there’s a Brownie in this house, I’ll make him a suit of it.”

“You’ll what?” shrieked the old lady. “Son Thomas, son Thomas, you’re mad! Do what you please for the Brownies, but never make them clothes.”

“There’s nothing they want more,” said the Tailor, “by all accounts. They’re all in rags, as well they may be, doing so much work.”

“If you make clothes for this Brownie, he’ll go for good,” said the Grandmother, in a voice of awful warning.