'Dear Little Blue Eyes, go back to your homes; dear Little Pink Ears, go back to your holes.'
As she spoke a blue spark leapt out of her eyes, followed by a whizzing of something pink, and when she opened her eyes again, the radiant circle of sea-fairies round the mother-of-pearl carriage, the dazzling white steeds with flowing manes and tails, were all gone, and she only saw the usual sights of eventide on the beach: the gulls flying over the hillocks and across the sands to their sleeping-places in the cliffs; a man driving the cows up the bay to be milked; the stems of the tamarisk on the hedges, scarlet in the sun-glow; and the vast luminous sky over it all. Beautiful as everything was, it was not nearly so beautiful, Bessie Jane thought, as were those little sea-fairies and horses on the pathway of crimson fire!
She stood close to the edge of the water till the line of light was gone, and then she turned away from the sea and went up the beach towards Tamarisk Lane, to tell Old Annis what she had heard and seen.
As she was going up, she met the same old man and his donkeys she had seen the day before. He was coming down for his last pannier of sand. He stopped and spoke to her, and asked why she was looking so happy.
'I have seen the Small People,' answered the child, 'and the dear little fairies that live in the sea.'
'You don't mean to say so?' cried the old man. 'You are a lucky little maid to have seen all they little dears!' as Bessie Jane nodded. ''Tis not often folks do see 'em nowadays; but they did backalong, my mother told me. What was 'em like, Miss Bessie Jane?'
'I cannot stop to tell you now,' said the child. 'It is rather late, and I want to go and see the Wise Woman in Tamarisk Lane. You are late getting sand, arn't you?'
'Iss fy, I be. 'Tis for your father--Maister Rosewarne--and I must make haste and get it. My donkey do want his supper, and so do I.'
Old Annis was at her cottage gate watching for her little friend's return, and when the child came up she listened with the greatest interest to all she had to tell her, and said how pleased she was that she had seen and heard so much.
'It is a reward,' she added, 'for being so kind to a poor lonely old woman.'