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_A Penny a Day_ was written by Walter de la Mare
(1873-1956), and was included in his _Collected Stories for
Children_ (1947).

Title: Collected Stories for Children -- A Penny a Day
Date of first publication: 1947
Author: Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
Date first posted: 1 July 2007
Date last updated: 1 July 2007
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #4

This ebook was produced by: Dr Mark Bear Akrigg




A Penny a Day

by Walter de la Mare (from his _Collected Stories for Children_
[1947])




Once upon a time, there lived in a cottage that had been built
out of the stones of a ruinous Castle and stood within its very
walls, an old woman, and her granddaughter--whose name also was
Griselda. Here they lived quite alone, being the only two left of
a family of farmers who had once owned a wide track of land
around them--fields, meadows, heath and moorland--skirting the
cliffs and the sea.

But all this was long ago. Now Griselda and her old grandmother
had little left but the roof over their heads and a long garden
whose apples and cherries and plum-trees flowered in spring under
the very walls of the Castle. Many birds nested in this quiet
hollow; and the murmur of the sea on the beach beyond it was
never hushed to rest.

The old woman tended the garden. And Griselda had very little
time wherein to be idle. After her day's work in the farms and
fields, she went so weary to bed that however much she tried to
keep awake in order to enjoy the company of her own thoughts, she
was usually fast asleep before the wick of her tallow candle had
ceased to smoulder. Yet for reasons not known even to herself she
was as happy as she was good-natured. In looks she resembled a
mermaid. Her fair face was unusually gentle and solemn, which may
in part have come from her love and delight in gazing at and
listening to the sea.

Whenever she had time to herself, which was very seldom, she
would climb up by the broken weed-grown steps to the very top of
the Castle tower, and sit there--like Fatima's sister--looking
out over the green cliffs and the vast flat blue of the ocean.
She sat as small as a manikin there. When the sea-winds had blown
themselves out she would search the beach for driftwood--the only
human creature to be seen--in the thin salt spray blown in on the
wind. And the sea-birds would scream around her while the slow
toppling Atlantic breakers shook the earth with their thunder. In
still evenings, too, when storms had been raging far out over the
ocean, and only a slow groundswell poured in its heavy waters
upon the shore, it seemed that sunken bells were ringing from a
belfry submerged and hidden for ever in the deeps.

But no humans, except Griselda, were there to listen. It was
seldom, even, that the people in the nearest village came down to
the sea-strand; and never when night was falling. For the Castle
was a place forbidden. It was the haunt, it was said, of the
Strange Folk. On calm summer evenings unearthly dancers had been
seen dancing between the dusk and the moonlight on the short
green turf at the verge of the sands, where bugloss and
sea-lavender bloomed, and the gulls had their meeting place,
gabbling softly together as they preened their wings in the
twilight.

Griselda had often heard these tales. But, as she had lived under
the walls of the Castle, and had played alone in its ruins ever
since she could remember anything at all, she listened to them
with delight. What was there to be afraid of? She longed to see
these dancers; and kept watch. And when the full moon was ablaze
in the sky, she would slip out of her grandmother's cottage and
dance alone in its dazzling light on the hard, sea-laid sands of
the beach; or sit, half-dreaming, in some green knoll of the
cliffs. She would listen to the voices of the sea among the rocks
and in the caves; and could not believe that what she heard was
only the lully and music of its waters.

Often, too, when sitting on her sun-warmed doorstep, morning or
evening, mending her clothes, or peeling potatoes, or shelling
peas, or scouring out some old copper pot, she would feel, all in
an instant, that she was no longer alone. Then she would stoop
her head a little lower over her needle or basin, pretending not
to notice that anything was different. As you can hear the notes
of an unseen bird or in the darkness can smell a flower past the
finding, so it was with Griselda. She had company beyond hearing,
touch, or sight.

Now and again, too, as she slid her downcast eyes to right or
left, she had actually caught a fleeting glimpse of a shape, not
quite real perhaps, but more real than nothing--though it might
be half-hidden behind the bushes, or peering down at her from an
ivy-shadowed hollow in the thick stone walls.

Such things did not alarm Griselda--no more than would the wind
in the keyhole, or the cry of flighting swans at night. They were
part of her life, just as the rarer birds and beetles and moths
and butterflies are part of the Earth's life. And whatever these
shadowy creatures were, she was certain they meant her no harm.

So the happy days went by, spring on to winter, though Griselda
had to work nearly all her waking hours to keep herself and her
old grandmother from want. Then, one day, the old woman fell ill.
She had fallen on the narrow stairs as she was shuffling down in
the morning, and there, at the foot of them, looking no more
alive than a bundle of old clothes, Griselda found her when she
came in with her driftwood.

She was old, and worn and weary, and Griselda knew well that
unless great care was taken of her, she might get worse; and even
die. The thought of this terrified her. 'Oh, Grannie, Grannie!'
she kept whispering to herself as she went about her work, 'I'll
do anything--anything in the world--I don't mind what happens--if
only you'll promise not to _die_!' But she soon began to take
courage again, and kept such a cheerful face that the old woman
hadn't an inkling of how sick with care and foreboding Griselda's
small head often was, or how near her heart came to despair.

She scarcely had time now to wash her face or comb her hair, or
even to sleep and eat. She seldom sat down to a meal, and even
when she did, there was but a minute or two in which to gobble it
up. She was so tired she could scarcely drag her feet up the
steep narrow staircase; the colour began to fade out of her
cheeks, and her face to grow haggard and wan.

Still, she toiled on, still sang over her work, and simply
refused to be miserable. And however sick and hungry and anxious
she might feel, she never let her grandmother see that she was.
The old soul lay helpless and in pain on her bed, and had
troubles enough of her own. So Griselda had nobody to share hers
with; and instead of their getting better they got worse.

And when--after a hot breathless night during which she had lain
between waking and dreaming while the lightning flared at her
window, and the thunder raved over the sea--when, next morning
she came down very early to find that the hungry mice had stolen
more than half of the handful of oatmeal she had left in the
cupboard, and that her little crock of milk had turned sour, her
heart all but failed her. She sat down on the doorstep and she
began to cry.

It was early in May; the flashing dark blue sea was tumbling
among the rocks of the beach, its surf like snow. The sun blazed
in the east, and all around her the trees in their new leaves
were blossoming, and the birds singing, and the air was cool and
fragrant with flowers after the rain.

In a little while Griselda stopped crying--and very few tears had
trickled down from her eyes--and with her chin propped on her
hands, she sat staring out across the bright green grass, her
eyes fixed vacantly on three butterflies that were chasing one
another in the calm sweet air. This way, that way, they glided,
fluttered, dipped and soared; then suddenly swooped up into the
dazzling blue of the sky above the high broken wall and vanished
from sight.

Griselda sighed. It was as if they had been mocking her misery.
And with that sigh, there was no more breath left in her body. So
she had to take a much deeper breath to make up for it. After
that she sighed no more--since she had suddenly become aware
again that she was being watched. And this time she knew by what.
Not twelve paces away, at the top of a flight of tumbledown stone
steps that corkscrewed up to one of the Castle turrets, stood
what seemed to be an old wizened pygmy hunched-up old man.

He was of the height of a child of five; he had pointed ears,
narrow shoulders, and a hump on his back. And he wore a coat made
of a patchwork of moleskins. He stood there--as stock-still as
the stones themselves--his bright colourless eyes under his
moleskin cap fixed on her, as if Griselda was as outlandish an
object to him as he was to Griselda.

She shut her own for a moment, supposing he might have come out
of her fancy; then looked again. But already, his crooked staff
in his hand, this dwarf had come rapidly shuffling along over the
turf towards her. And yet again he stayed--a few paces away.
Then, fixing his small bright gaze on her face, he asked her in a
shrill, cracked, rusty voice why she was crying. In spite of
their lightness, his eyes were piercingly sharp in his dried-up
face. And Griselda, as she watched him, marvelled how any living
creature could look so old.

Gnarled, wind-shorn trees--hawthorn and scrub oak--grew here and
there in the moorland above the sea, and had stood there for
centuries among the yellow gorse and sea-pinks. He looked older
even than these. She told him she had nothing to cry about,
except only that the mice had been at her oatmeal, the milk had
turned sour, and she didn't know where to turn next. He asked her
what she had to do, and she told him that too.

At this he crinkled up his pin-sharp eyes, as if he were
thinking, and glanced back at the turret from which he had come.
Then, as if he had made up his mind, he shuffled a step or two
nearer and asked Griselda what wages she would pay him if he
worked for her for nine days. 'For three days, and three days,
and three days,' he said, 'and that's all. How much?'

Griselda all but laughed out loud at this. She told the dwarf
that far from being able to pay anyone to work for her, there
wasn't a farthing in the house--and not even food enough to offer
him a taste of breakfast. 'Unless', she said, 'you would care for
a cold potato. There's one or two of _them_ left over from
supper.'

'Ay, nay, nay,' said the dwarf. 'I won't work without wages, and
I can get my own food. But hark now: if you'll promise to give me
a penny a day for nine days, I will work here for you from dawn
to dark. Then you yourself will be able to be off to the farms
and the fields. But it must be a penny a day and no less; it must
be paid every evening at sunset before I go to my own parts
again; and the old woman up there must never see me, and shall
hardly know that I have come.'

Griselda sat looking at him--as softly and easily as she could;
but she had never in all her days seen any human being like this
before. Though his face was wizened and cockled up like a winter
apple, yet it seemed as if he could never have been any
different. He looked as old as the stones around him and yet no
older than the snapdragons that grew in them. To meet his eyes
was like peering through a rusty keyhole into a long empty room.
She expected at any instant he would vanish away, or be changed
into something utterly different--a flowering thistle or a heap
of stones!

Long before this very morning, indeed, Griselda had often caught
sight of what looked like living shapes and creatures--on the
moorland or the beach--which, when she had looked again, were
clean gone; or, when she had come close, proved to be only a
furze-bush, or a rock jutting out of the turf, or a scangle of
sheep's wool caught on a thorn. This is the way of these
strangers. While then she was not in the least afraid of the
dwarf, she felt uneasy and bewildered in his company.

But she continued to smile at him, and answered that though she
could not promise to pay him a penny until she had a penny to
pay, she would do her best to earn some. Now nothing was left.
And she had already made up her mind to be off at once to a farm
along the sea-cliffs, where she would be almost sure to get work.
If the dwarf would wait but one day, she told him, she would ask
the farmer to pay her her wages before she came home again. 'Then
I _could_ give you the penny,' she said.

Old Moleskins continued to blink at her. 'Well,' he said, 'be off
then now. And be back before sunset.'

But first Griselda made her grandmother a bowl of water-porridge,
using up for it the last pinch of meal she had in the house. This
she carried up to the old woman, with a sprig of apple blossom in
a gallipot to put beside it and make it taste better. Since she
had so promised him, and felt sure he meant no harm, she said
nothing to her grandmother about the dwarf. She tidied the room,
tucked in the bedclothes, gave the old woman some water to wash
in, beat up her pillow, pinned a shawl over her shoulders, and,
having made her as comfortable as she could manage, left her to
herself, promising to be home again as soon as she could.

'And be sure, Grannie,' she said, 'whatever happens, not to stir
from your bed.'

By good fortune, the farmer's wife whom she went off to see along
the sea-cliffs was making butter that morning. The farmer knew
Griselda well, and when she had finished helping his wife and the
dairymaid with the churning, he not only paid her two pennies for
her pains, but a third, 'For the sake', as he said, 'of your
goldilocks, my dear; and _they're_ worth a king's ransom!...
What say you, Si?' he called to his son, who had just come in
with the calves. Simon, his face all red, and he was a good deal
uglier (though pleasant in face) than his father, glanced up at
Griselda, but the gold must have dazzled his eyes, for he turned
away and said nothing.

At this moment the farmer's wife came bustling out into the yard
again. She had brought Griselda not only a pitcher of new milk
and a couple of hen's eggs to take to her grandmother, but some
lardy-cakes and a jar of honey for herself. So Griselda, feeling
ten times happier than she had been for many a long day, hurried
off home.

Now there was a duck-pond under a willow on the way she took
home, and there, remembering what the farmer had said, she
paused, stooped over, and looked at herself in the muddy water.
But the sky was of the brightest blue above her head; and there
were so many smooth oily ripples on the surface of the water made
by the ducks as they swam and preened and gossiped together that
Griselda couldn't see herself clearly, or be sure from its
reflection even if her hair was still gold! She got up, laughed
to herself, waved her hand to the ducks and hastened on.

When, carrying her pitcher, she had come in under the high
snapdragon-tufted gateway of the Castle, and so home again, a
marvel it was to see. The kitchen was as neat as a new pin. The
table had been scoured; the fire-irons twinkled like silver; the
crockery on the dresser looked as if it had been newly painted; a
brown jar of wallflowers bloomed sweet on the sill, and even the
brass pendulum of the cuckoo-clock, that hadn't ticked for years,
shone round as the sun at noonday, and was swinging away as if it
meant to catch up before nightfall all the time it had ever lost.

Beside the hearth, too, lay a pile of broken driftwood, a fire
was merrily dancing in the grate, there was a fish cooking in the
pan in the brick oven, the old iron kettle hung singing from its
hook; and a great saucepan, brimful of peeled potatoes, sat in
the hearth beneath it to keep it company. And not only this, for
there lay on the table a dish of fresh-pulled salad--lettuces,
radishes, and young sorrel and dandelion leaves. But of Old
Moleskins, not a sign.

Griselda herself was a good housewife, but in all her days she
had never seen the kitchen look like this. It was as fresh as a
daisy. And Griselda began to sing--to keep the kettle company.
Having made a custard out of one of the eggs and the milk she had
brought home with her, she climbed upstairs again to see her
grandmother.

'Well, Grannie,' she said, 'how are you now? I've been away and
come back. I haven't wasted a moment; but you must be nearly
starving.'

The old woman told her she had spent the morning between dozing
and dreaming and looking from her bed out of the window at the
sea. This she could do because immediately opposite her window
was the broken opening of what had once been a window in the
walls of the Castle. It was a kind of spy-hole into the world for
the old woman.

'And what else were you going to tell me, Grannie?' said
Griselda.

The old woman spied about her from her pillow as if she were
afraid she might be overheard. Then she warned Griselda that next
time she went out she must make sure to latch the door. Some
strange animal must have been prowling about in the house, she
said. She had heard it not only under her open window, but even
stirring about in the room below. 'Though I must say', she added,
'I had to listen pretty hard!'

Griselda glanced up out of the lattice window and, since her head
was a good deal higher than her grandmother's pillow, she could
see down into the green courtyard below. And there stood Old
Moleskins, looking up at her.

An hour or two afterwards, when the sun was dipping behind the
green hills beyond the village, and Griselda sat alone, beside
the fire, her sewing in her lap, she heard shuffling footsteps on
the cobbles outside, and the dwarf appeared at the window.
Griselda thanked him with all her heart for what he had done for
her, and took out of her grandmother's old leather purse one of
the three pennies she had earned at the farm.

The dwarf eyed it greedily, then, pointing with his thumb at an
old pewter pot that stood on the chimneyshelf, told Griselda to
put the penny in it and to keep it safe for him until he asked
for it.

'Nine days,' he said, 'I will work for you--three and three and
three--and no more, for the same wages. And then you must pay me
all you owe me. And I will come every evening to see it into the
pot.'

So Griselda tiptoed on the kitchen fender, put the penny in the
pot, and shut down the lid. When she turned round again Old
Moleskins was gone.

Before she went to bed that night, she peeped out of the door.
There was no colour left in the sky except the dark blue of
night; but a slip of moon, as thin as an egg-shell, hung in the
west above the hill, and would soon be following the sun beyond
it. Griselda solemnly bowed to the moon seven times, and shook
the old purse in her pocket.

When she came down the next morning, the kitchen had been swept,
a fire was dancing up the chimney, her mug and plate and spoon
had been laid on the table, and a smoking bowl of milk-porridge
was warming itself on the hearth. When Griselda took the porridge
up to her grandmother, the old woman's eyes nearly popped out of
her head, for Griselda had been but a minute gone. She took a sup
of the porridge, smacked her lips, tasted it again, and asked
Griselda what she had put in it to flavour it. It was a taste she
had never tasted before. And Griselda told the old woman it was a
secret.

That day the farmer gave Griselda some old gold-brown
Cochin-China hens to pluck for market. 'They've seen better days,
but will do for the pot,' he said. And having heard that her
grandmother was better, he kept her working for him till late in
the afternoon. So Griselda plucked and singed busily on, grieved
for the old hens, but happy to think of her wages. Then once more
the farmer paid her her twopence; and, once more, a penny over;
this time not for the sake of her bright gold hair, but for her
'glass-grey eyes'. So now there was fivepence in her purse, and
as yet there had been no need, beyond last night's penny for the
dwarf, to spend any of them.

When Griselda came home, not only was everything in the kitchen
polished up brighter than ever, but a pot of broth was simmering
on the hob, which, to judge by the savour of it, contained not
only carrots and onions and pot-herbs but a young rabbit. Besides
which, a strip of the garden had been freshly dug; three rows of
brisk young cabbages had been planted, and, as Griselda guessed,
two more each of broad beans and peas. Whatever the dwarf had set
his hand to was a job well done.

Sharp to his time--the sun had but that very moment dipped
beneath the hills--he came to the kitchen door for his wages.
Griselda smiled at him, thanked him, and took out a penny. He
gazed at it earnestly; then at her. And he said, 'Put that in the
pot, too.' So now there were two pennies in his pewter pot and
four pennies in Griselda's purse.

And so the days went by. Her grandmother grew steadily better,
and on the next Sunday--muffled up in a shawl like an old
tortoiseshell cat--she sat up a little while beside her window.
On most mornings Griselda had gone out to work at the farm or in
the village; on one or two she had stayed in the house and sat
with her grandmother to finish her sewing and mending or any
other work she had found to do.

While she was in the cottage she never saw the dwarf, though he
might be hidden away in the garden. But still her grandmother
talked of the strange stirrings and noises she heard when
Griselda was away. 'You'd have thought', the old woman said,
'there was a whole litter of young pigs in the kitchen, and the
old sow, too!'

On the eighth day, the farmer not only gave Griselda her tuppence
for her wages and another for the sake of 'the dimple in her
cheek', but the third penny had a hole in it. 'And that's for
luck,' said the farmer. She went home rejoicing. And seeing no
reason why she shouldn't share her luck with the dwarf, she put
the penny with the hole in it into the pewter pot when he came
that evening. And as usual he said not a word. He merely watched
Griselda's face with his colourless eyes while she thanked him
for what he had done, and then watched her put his penny into the
pot. Then in an instant he was gone.

'That maid Griselda, from the Castle yonder,' said the farmer to
his wife that night as, candlestick in hand, the two of them were
going up to bed, 'she seems to me as willing as she's neat and
pretty. And if she takes as good care of the pence as she seems
to, my dear, there's never a doubt, I warrant, but as she will
take as good care of the pounds!'

And he was right. Griselda had taken such good care of the pence
that at this very moment she was sitting alone in the kitchen in
the light of her solitary candle and slowly putting down on paper
every penny that she had been paid and every penny that she had
spent:

                               Acounts

   receeved                        Spent
     from Farmer for wages   10      oatmeel               2
     prezants                 5      bones for soop        2
     wages for Missus Jakes   2      shuger                2
     wages for piggs          1      hair ribon            1
                             --      wole                  1
                             18      doll                  1
                                     money for Moalskins   8
                                                          --
                                                          17

The doll had been a present for the cowman's little daughter. And
though Griselda had made many mistakes before she got her sum
right, it was right _now_; and here was the penny over in her
purse to prove it.

The next evening, a little before sunset, Griselda sat waiting
for the dwarf to come. Never had she felt so happy and
lighthearted. It was the last of his nine days; she had all his
nine pennies ready for him--one in her purse and eight in the
pewter pot; the farmer had promised her as much work as she could
manage; her old grandmother was nearly well again; the cupboard
was no longer bare, and she was thankful beyond all words. It
seemed as if her body could not possibly contain her happiness.

The trees stood in the last sunshine of evening as though they
had borrowed their green coats from Paradise; the paths were
weeded; the stones had a fresh coat of whitewash; there was not a
patch of soil without its plants or seedlings. From every clump
of ivy on the old walls of the Castle a thrush seemed to be
singing; and every one of them seemed to be singing louder than
the rest.

Her sewing idle in her lap, Griselda sat on the doorstep,
drinking everything in with her clear grey eyes, and at the same
time she was thinking too. Not only of Moleskins and of all he
had done for her, but of the farmer's son also, who had come part
of the way home with her the evening before. And then she began
to day-dream.

But it seemed her spirit had been but a moment gone out of her
body into this far-away when the tiny sound of stone knocking on
stone recalled her to herself again, and there--in the very last
beam of the setting sun--stood the dwarf on the cobbles of the
garden path. He told Griselda that his nine days' work for her
was done, and that he had come for his wages.

Griselda beckoned him into the kitchen, and there she whispered
her thanks again and again for all his help and kindness. She
took her last penny out of her purse and put it on the table,
then tiptoeing, reached up to the chimney-shelf and lifted down
the pewter pot. Even as she did so, her heart turned cold inside
her. Not the faintest jingle sounded when she shook it. It seemed
light as a feather. With trembling fingers she managed at last to
lift the lid and look in. 'Oh!' she whispered. 'Someone...' A
dark cloud came over her eyes. The pot was empty.

The dwarf stood in the doorway, his eager cold bright eyes fixed
on her face. 'Well,' he croaked. 'Where is my money? Why am I to
be kept waiting, young woman? Answer me that!'

Griselda could only stare back at him, the empty pot in her hand.
His eyebrows began to jerk up and down as if with rage, like an
orang-outang's. 'So it's gone, eh? My pennies are all gone, eh?
So you have cheated me! Eh? Eh? _Cheated_ me?'

Nothing Griselda could say was of any avail. He refused to listen
to her. The more she entreated him only to have patience and she
would pay him all she owed him, the more sourly and angrily he
stormed at her. And to see the tears rolling down her cheeks on
either side of her small nose only worsened his rage.

'I will give you one more day,' he bawled at last. 'One! I will
come back to-morrow at sunset, and every single penny must be
ready for me. What I do, I can undo! What I make, I can break!
Hai, hai! we shall see!' With that he stumped out into the garden
and was gone.

Griselda was so miserable and her mind was in such a whirl that
she could do nothing for a while but sit, cold and vacant,
staring out of the open door. Where could the pennies have gone
to? Mice don't eat pennies. Had she been walking in her sleep?
Who could have stolen them? And how was she to earn as many more
in only one day's work?

And while she sat brooding, there came a _thump, thump, thump_
on the floor over her head. She sprang to her feet, lit a candle
by the fire-flames, dabbed her eyes in the bucket of cold water
that Old Moleskins had brought in from the well, and took up her
grandmother's supper.

'Did you hear any noises in the house to-day, Grannie?' she asked
cautiously as she put the bowl of broth into her skinny old
hands. At this question the old woman, who was very hungry, fell
into a temper. Every single evening, she told Griselda, she had
warned her that some strange animal had come rummaging into the
house below when she was away working at the farm. 'You never
kept watch, you never even answered me,' she said. 'And now it's
too late. To-day I have heard nothing.'

It was all but dark when, having made the old woman comfortable
for the night, Griselda hastened down into the kitchen again. She
could not bear to wait until morning. She had made up her mind
what to do. Leaving her grandmother drowsy after her broth and
nodding off to sleep, she stole out of the house and shut the
door gently behind her. Groping her way under the ivied walls
into the open she hastened on in the quiet moonlight, climbing as
swiftly as she could the steep grassy slope at the cliff's edge.
An owl called. From far below she could hear the tide softly
gushing on the stones of the beach; and over the sea the sky was
alive with stars.

A light was still glimmering at an upper window when she reached
the farm. She watched it a while and the shadows moving to and
fro across the blind, and at last timidly lifted the knocker and
knocked on the door. The farmer himself answered her knock. A
candlestick in his hand, he stood there in his shirt sleeves
looking out at her over his candle, astonished to find so late a
visitor standing there in the starlight, muffled up in a shawl.
But he spoke kindly to her. And then and there Griselda poured
out her story, though she said not a word about the dwarf.

She told the farmer that she was in great trouble; that, though
she couldn't give him any reasons, she must have eight pennies by
the next evening. And if only he would lend her them and trust
her, she promised him faithfully she would work for just as long
as he wanted her to in exchange.

'Well,' said the farmer. 'That's a queer tale, _that_ is! But
why not work for four days, and I'll give 'ee the eightpence
then.' But Griselda shook her head. She told him that this was
impossible; that she could not wait, not even for one day.

'See here, then,' said the farmer, smiling to himself, though not
openly, for he was curious to know what use she was going to make
of the money. 'I can't give you any work to-morrow, nor be sure
of the next day. But supposing there's none for a whole week, if
you promise to cut off that gold hair of yours and give me that
_then_, you shall have the eight pennies now--this very
moment--and no questions asked.'

Griselda stood quite still in the doorway, her face pale and
grave in the light of the farmer's candle. It seemed that every
separate hair she had was stirring upon her head. This all came,
she thought, of admiring herself in the duck-pond; and not being
more careful with her money; and doing what the dwarf told her to
do and not what she thought best. But as it seemed that at any
moment the farmer might run in and fetch a pair of shears to cut
off her hair there and then, she made her promise; and he himself
went back laughing to his wife, and told her what had happened.
'She turned as white as a sheet,' he said. 'And what I'd dearly
like to know is what's worriting the poor dear. She's as gentle
as the day is long, and her word's as good as her bond. Well,
well! But I'll see to it. And we'll have just one lock of that
hair, my dear, if only for a keepsake.'

'It looks to _me_', said the farmer's wife, '_that_'ll be for
our Simon to say.'

When Griselda reached home again--and a sad and solitary walk it
had been through the dewy fields above the sea--she went to an
old wooden coffer in which she kept her few 'treasures'. Many of
them were remembrances of her mother. And she took out a net for
the hair that her mother herself had worn when she was a girl of
about the same age as Griselda. Then she sat down in front of a
little bare square of looking-glass, braided her hair as close as
she could to her head, and drew the net tightly over it. Then she
put her purse with the nine pennies in it under her pillow, said
her prayers, and got into bed.

For hours she lay listening to the breakers on the shore,
solemnly drumming the night away, and watched her own particular
star as moment by moment it sparkled on from diamond pane to pane
across her lattice window. But when at last she fell asleep, her
dreams were scarcely less sorrowful than her waking.

She stayed at home the next day in case the dwarf should come
early, but not until sunset did she hear the furtive clatter of
his shoes as usual on the stones. She took out her purse to pay
him his pennies. He asked her where they had come from. 'And
why', said he, 'have you braided your hair so close and caged it
up in a net? Are you frightened the birds will be after it?'

Griselda laughed at this in spite of herself. And she told him
that she had promised her hair to a friend, and that she had
wound it up tight to her head in order to remind herself that it
was not her own any longer, and to keep it safe. At this Old
Moleskins himself burst out laughing under the green-berried
gooseberry bush--for Griselda had taken him out into the garden
lest her grandmother should hear them talking.

'A pretty bargain that was!' he said. 'But _I_ know one even
better!' And he promised Griselda that if she would let him snip
off but one small lock of her hair he would transport her into
the grottoes of the Urchin People under the sea. 'And _there_,'
he said, 'if you will work for us for only one hour a day for
seven days, you shall have seven times the weight of all your
hair in fine solid gold. If, after that, I mean,' and he eyed her
craftily, 'you will promise to come back and stay with us always.
And then you shall have a basket of fruit from our secret
orchards.'

Griselda looked at the dwarf, and then at the small green
ripening gooseberries on the bush, and then stared a while in
silence at the daisies on the ground. Then she told the dwarf she
could not give him a lock of her hair because that was all
promised. Instead, she would work for him every day for nine
days, free. It was the least she could do, she thought, in return
for what he had done for her.

'Well then,' said Moleskins, 'if it can't be hair it must be an
eyelash. Else you will never see the grottoes. An eyelash for
your journey-money!'

To this she agreed, and knelt down beside the gooseberry bush,
shutting her eyes tight so that he might more easily pluck out
one of the lashes that fringed their lids. She felt his stumpy
earthy fingers brush across them, and nothing beside.

But when she opened them, and looked out of her body, a change
had come upon the scene around her--garden, cottage, castle walls
and ruined turrets, cliffs, sea and caves--all had vanished. No
evening ray of sun shone here, not the faintest sea-breeze
stirred the air. It was a place utterly still, and lay bathed in
a half-light pale and green, rilling in from she knew not where.
And around her, and above her head, faint colours shimmered in
the quarried quartz of the grottoes. And the only sound to be
heard was a distant sighing, as of the tide.

There were many trees here, too, in the orchards of the Urchin
People, their slim stems rooted in sands as fine and white as
hoarfrost. And their branches were laden with fruits of as many
colours as there are precious stones. And there was a charm of
birds singing, though Griselda could see none. The very air
seemed thin and fine in this dim and sea-green light: the only
other sound to be heard was a faint babbling of water among the
rocks, water which lost itself in the sands of the orchard.

The dwarf had brought out some little rush baskets, and told
Griselda what she must do. 'Gather up the fallen fruit,' he said,
'but pick none from the branches, and sort it out each according
to its kind and colour, one colour into each of the baskets. But
be sure not to climb into the trees or shake them. And when your
hour is finished I will come again.'

Griselda at once set to work. Though the branches overhead were
thick with fruit, there were as yet not many that had fallen, and
it seemed at first it would take her but a few moments to sort
them out into their baskets. But the thin air and twilight of the
grotto made her drowsy, and as she stooped again and yet again to
pick up the fruit, her eyelids drooped so heavily that at any
moment she feared she would fall asleep. And if once she fell
asleep what might not happen then? Would she ever win back to
earth again? Was this all nothing but a dream? She refreshed her
eyes in the trickle of snow-cold water rilling down from the
rocks; and now she fancied she heard a faint metallic noise as of
knocking and hammering and small voices in the distance. But even
when all the fallen fruits had been sorted out into her baskets,
emerald-green, orange, amethyst, crystal and blue, her work was
not done. For the moment she sat down to rest, yet another of the
fruits would plump down softly as an apple into deep grass upon
the sand beneath it, and she had to hasten away to put it into
its basket.

When the dwarf came back he looked about him to see that no
fruits had been left lying in the sand. He squinnied here, he
squinnied there, and even turned over the fruits in the baskets
to see that they had been sorted right. 'Well, Griselda,' he said
at last, and it was the first time he had used her name, 'what's
well done is done for good. And here's the penny for your wages.'

There was a stealthy gleam in his eyes as he softly fumbled with
his fingers in the old moleskin pouch that hung at his side, and
fetched out his penny. Griselda held out her hand, and he put the
penny into its palm, still watching her. She looked at it--and
looked again. It was an old, thick, battered penny, and the
king's image on it had been worn very faint. It had a slightly
crooked edge, too, and there was a hole in it. There could be no
doubt of it--this was the penny the farmer had given her, 'for
luck'. Until now Griselda had not realized that she had for a
moment suspected it might be Old Moleskins himself who had stolen
his pennies out of the pewter pot. Now she was sure of it. She
continued to stare at the penny, yet said nothing. After all, she
was thinking to herself, the money in the pot belonged to him. He
had a right to it. You cannot steal what is yours already! But
then, a lie is almost as bad as stealing. Perhaps he hadn't meant
it to be a lie. Perhaps he merely wanted to see what she might
say and do. That would still be a lie but not such a wicked lie.
Perhaps since he wasn't _quite_ human he couldn't in any case
tell _quite_ a lie. Perhaps it was only a dwarf lie, though his
kindness to her had certainly not been only dwarf kindness! She
smiled to herself at this; lifted up her face again, and seeing
the dwarf still watching her, smiled at him also. And she thanked
him.

At this he burst out laughing, till the roof and walls of the
grotto echoed with the cackle of it, and at least half a dozen of
the grotto fruits dropped from their twigs and thumped softly
down into the sand. 'Aha,' he cried, 'what did I tell you? Weep
no more, Griselda. That is one penny, and here are the others.'
He took them out of his pouch, and counted them into her hand,
and the eight pennies too that she had given him but a little
while before; and as he did so, he sang out in a high quavering
voice like a child's:

   _'Never whatever the_ humans _say
   Have the Urchin Folk worked for any man's pay._

Ah, Griselda,' he said, 'if we could keep you, you would scarcely
ever have to work at all. No churning and weeding, no sewing and
scrubbing, no cooking or polishing, sighing or sobbing; you
should be for ever happy and for ever young. And you wouldn't
have to scissor off a single snippet of your silk-soft hair!'

Griselda looked at him in the still green light and faintly shook
her head. But she made a bargain with him none the less that
every year she would work in the grottoes for the Urchin
People--if he would come to fetch her--for one whole summer's day.
So this was the bargain between them.

And he took out of his breeches' pocket a thick gold piece, about
the size of an English crown-piece, and put it into her hand. On
the one side of it the image of a mermaid was stamped, on the
other a little fruit tree growing out of a mound of sand and
knobbed with tiny fruits. 'That's for a keepsake,' he said. And
he himself took one of each kind of the orchard fruits out of
their baskets and put them into another. 'And since "no pay" is
_no_ pay,' he went on, 'stoop, Griselda, and I'll give you your
eyelash back again.'

Griselda knelt down in the sand, and once more the earthy fingers
brushed over her eyelids. The next instant all was dark; and a
thin chill wind was stirring on her cheek. She opened her eyes to
find herself alone again under the night-sky, and--as though she
had been overtaken by the strangeness of a dream--kneeling on the
dew-damped mould of her familiar garden under the stars. But for
proof that what had happened was no dream, the gold piece stamped
with the images of the mermaid and the leafy tree was still
clasped in her hand, and in the other was the basket of fruits.

As for the eyelash, since Griselda had never counted how many she
had before Old Moleskins plucked one out, she could never tell
for certain if it had been put back. But when she told Simon, the
farmer's son, that there might be one missing--and she could tell
him no more because of her promise to the dwarf--he counted them
over again and again. And though he failed to make the total come
to the same number twice, he assured Griselda that there couldn't
possibly ever have been room for another. And Griselda gave him
the green one of the grotto fruits she had brought him for a
present from out of the dwarf's basket. This too was for a
keepsake. 'It's as hard as a stone,' he said. 'Do we eat it,
Griselda?' But hard though it was, there must have been a curious
magic in it, for as they sat there together under the willow tree
by the duck-pond, it was as if they had been transported not into
the grottoes of the Urchin People under the sea, but clean back
into the Garden of Eden.

As for Griselda's hair, there it shone as thick as ever on her
head. And as for the farmer, he refused every single penny of the
eightpence.

'It's a queer thing to me, mother,' he was saying to his wife at
this very moment, as they sat together on either side of the
kitchen fire--just as they were accustomed to sit even in the
height of summertime--'it's a queer thing to me that this very
farm of ours once belonged to that young woman's
great-great-grandfather!' He took a long whiff of his pipe. 'And
what _I_ says is that them who once had, when they gets again,
should know how to _keep_.'

'Ay, George,' said she, and she said no more.


[End of _A Penny a Day_ by Walter de la Mare]