Beyond the "treviss,"
which formed one side of the stall, stood a cow, who turned her head and
lowed when Jeanie came into the stable, an appeal which her habitual
occupations enabled her perfectly to understand, and with which she could
not refuse complying, by shaking down some fodder to the animal, which
had been neglected like most things else in the castle of the sluggard.
While she was accommodating "the milky mother" with the food which she
should have received two hours sooner, a slipshod wench peeped into the
stable, and perceiving that a stranger was employed in discharging the
task which she, at length, and reluctantly, had quitted her slumbers to
perform, ejaculated,
"Eh, sirs! the Brownie! the Brownie!" and fled, yelling as if she had
seen the devil.
To explain her terror it may be necessary to notice that the old house of
Dumbiedikes had, according to report, been long haunted by a Brownie, one
of those familiar spirits who were believed in ancient times to supply
the deficiencies of the ordinary labourer--
Whirl the long mop, and ply the airy flail.
Certes, the convenience of such a supernatural assistance could have been
nowhere more sensibly felt than in a family where the domestics were so
little disposed to personal activity; yet this serving maiden was so far
from rejoicing in seeing a supposed aerial substitute discharging a task
which she should have long since performed herself, that she proceeded to
raise the family by her screams of horror, uttered as thick as if the
Brownie had been flaying her.
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