You may be further removed
too from the fairy race."
I remembered what the lady had said about my grandmothers.
Here she placed some bread and some milk before me, with a kindly
apology for the homeliness of the fare, with which, however, I
was in no humour to quarrel. I now thought it time to try to get
some explanation of the strange words both of her daughter and
herself.
"What did you mean by speaking so about the Ash?"
She rose and looked out of the little window. My eyes followed
her; but as the window was too small to allow anything to be seen
from where I was sitting, I rose and looked over her shoulder. I
had just time to see, across the open space, on the edge of the
denser forest, a single large ash-tree, whose foliage showed
bluish, amidst the truer green of the other trees around it; when
she pushed me back with an expression of impatience and terror,
and then almost shut out the light from the window by setting up
a large old book in it.
"In general," said she, recovering her composure, "there is no
danger in the daytime, for then he is sound asleep; but there is
something unusual going on in the woods; there must be some
solemnity among the fairies to-night, for all the trees are
restless, and although they cannot come awake, they see and hear
in their sleep."
"But what danger is to be dreaded from him?"
Instead of answering the question, she went again to the window
and looked out, saying she feared the fairies would be
interrupted by foul weather, for a storm was brewing in the west.
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