Some little folks, who came late, were mounted on hares, which they left to graze a few yards from the cow.
For a good while the milkmaid stood, with the bucket on her head, like one spell-bound, looking at the Small People; and she would have continued much longer to admire them, but, just as some came within a yard of her, Dame Pendar suddenly stood up on the field-hedge and called to know how she was so long about Rosy, and had all the rest still to milk, and how she hadn't brought in a bucket-full yet?
At the first sound of old Dame Pendar's voice, the Small People pointed their fingers and made wry faces at her; then off galloped Rosy and the troop of small folks with her--all out of sight in a wink.
The maid hastened in, and told her mistress, and master too, what she had seen.
"Ah! fax, I knowed," said Dame Pendar to her husband, "and didn't I always tell 'e something was the matter that Rosy wouldn't yield half her milk. And surely," she continued to the milkmaid, "thou must have a four-leaved-clover, about thee; give me the wad in thy hat that I may look through it."
She examined it, and sure enough, found a stem of white clover, or three-leaved grass, with four leaves on it.
The mistress asked how big the Small People were, and how dressed.
"But few of them are more than half a yard or so high," the maid replied; "the women not so tall, yet they looked beautiful, all dressed like gentry; the women wore gowns as gay as a flower-garden in summer; their flaxen hair fell, in long curls, on their necks; and the men were very smart, all like sodjers or huntsmen, so it seemed to me. But they made frightful faces at you, and glared as if they would be the death of 'e. I shouldn't like to be in your shoes."
"Our best cow is as bad as bewitched," said Dame Pendar to her husband, "and what shall we do to drive the plagues of sprites?"
Her husband told her not to be so greedy; for old folks said that the Small People always brought good luck when unmolested and their doings were not pried into by curious fools; for his part, he was content to leave well alone. She made no reply, but--determined to have her way, next morning, betimes, unknown to her good man--she trotted off to Penberth, or Treen, and consulted a red-haired woman that Mr. Pendar couldn't "abide," because she was reputed, and truly, to be a witch.