It was the child's originality of manner that people found so
captivating. One of her many little tricks and ways of an original
quaintness was her habit of speaking of herself in the third person,
like the merest baby. 'Winifred likes this,' 'Winifred doesn't like
that,' were phrases that had an irresistible fascination for me.

Another fascinating characteristic of hers was connected with her
superstitions. Whenever on parting with her I exclaimed, as I often
did. 'Oh, what a lovely day we have had, Winifred!' she would look
expectantly in my eyes, murmuring, 'And--and--' This meant that I
was to say. 'And shall have many more such days,' as though there
were a prophetic power in words.

She talked with entire seriousness of having seen in a place called
Fairy Glen in Wales the Tylwyth Teg. And when I told her of Oberon
and Titania, and _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, whose acquaintance I
had made through Lamb's _Tales from Shakespeare_, she said that one
bright moonlight night she, in the company of two of her Gypsy
playmates, Rhona Boswell and a girl called Sinfi, had visited this
same Fairy Glen, when they saw the Fairy Queen alone on a ledge of
rock, dressed in a green kirtle with a wreath of golden leaves about
her head.

Another subject upon which I loved to hear her talk was that of the
'Knockers' of Snowdon, the guardians of undiscovered copper mines,
who sometimes by knocking on the rocks gave notice to individuals
they favoured of undiscovered copper, but these favoured ones were
mostly children who chanced to wander up Snowdon by themselves. She
had, she said, not only heard but seen these Knockers. They were
thick-set dwarfs, as broad as they were long. One Knocker, an elderly