atter-of-fact neighborhood. I had never heard that any
fairies or elves came over with the Pilgrims in the Mayflower. But a
little red-haired playmate with whom I became intimate used to take me
off with her into the fields, where, sitting, on the edge of a disused
cartway fringed with pussy-clover, she poured into my ears the most
remarkable narratives of acquaintances she had made with people who
lived under the ground close by us, in my father's orchard. Her literal
descriptions quite deceived me; I swallowed her stories entire, just as
people in the last century did Defoe's account of "The Apparition of
Mrs. Veal."

She said that these subterranean people kept house, and that they
invited her down to play with their children on Wednesday and Saturday
afternoons; also that they sometimes left a plate of cakes and tarts
for her at their door: she offered to show me the very spot where it
was,--under a great apple-tree which my brothers called "the
luncheon-tree," because we used to rest and refresh ourselves there,
when we helped my father weed his vegetable-garden. But she guarded
herself by informing me that it would be impossible for us to open the
door ourselves; that it could only be unfastened from the inside. She
told me these people's names--a "Mr. Pelican," and a "Mr. Apple-tree
Manasseh," who had a very large family of little "Manassehs." She said
that there was a still larger family, some of them probably living just
under the spot where we sat, whose surname was "Hokes." (If either of
us had been familiar with another word pronounced in the same way,
though spelled differently, I should since have thought that she was
all the time laughing in her sleeve at my easy belief.) These "Hokeses"
were not good-natured people, she added, whispering to me that we must
not speak about them aloud, as they had sharp ears, and might overhear
us, and do us mischief.

I think she was hoaxing herself as well as me; it was her way of being
a heroine in her own eyes and mine, and she had always the manner of
being entirely in earnest.

But she became more and more romantic in her inventions. A distant
aristocratic-looking mansion, which we could see half-hidden by trees,
across the river, she assured me was a haunted house, and that she had
passed many a night there, seeing unaccountable sights, and hearing
mysterious sounds. She further announced that she was to be married,
some time, to a young man who lived over there.