13 Joseph Jacobs Well, when the girl heard this, she felt as if she could have jumped out of her skin for joy, but she didn’t say a word. Next day that there little thing looked so maliceful when he came for the flax. And when night came, she heard that knocking against the window panes. She oped the window, and that come right in on the ledge. That was grinning from ear to ear, and Oo! that’s tail was twirling round so fast. “What’s my name?” that says, as that gave her the skeins. “Is that Solomon?” she says, pretending to be afeard. “Noo, t’ain’t,” that says, and that came further into the room. “Well, is that Zebedee?” says she again. “Noo, t’ain’t,” says the impet. And then that laughed and twirled that’s tail till you couldn’t hardly see it. “Take time, woman,” that says; “next guess, and you’re mine.” And that stretched out that’s black hands at her. Well, she backed a step or two, and she looked at it, and then she laughed out, and says she, pointing her finger at it: “NIMMY NIMMY NOT, YOUR NAME’S TOM TIT TOT!” Well, when that heard her, that gave an awful shriek and away that flew into the dark, and she never saw it any more. THE THREE SILLIES O NCE UPON A TIME there was a farmer and his wife who had one daughter, and she was courted by a gentleman. Every evening he used to come and see her, and stop to supper at the farmhouse, and the daughter used to be sent down into the cellar to draw the beer for supper. So one evening she had gone down to draw the beer, and she happened to look up at the ceiling while she was drawing, and she saw a mallet stuck in one of the beams. It must have been there a long, long time, but somehow or other she had never noticed it before, and she began a-thinking. And she thought it was very dangerous to have that mallet there, for she said to her- self: “Suppose him and me was to be married, and we was to have a son, and he was to grow up to be a man, and come down into the cellar to draw the beer, like as I’m doing now, and the mallet was to fall on his head and kill him, what a dreadful thing it would be!” And she put down the candle and the jug, and sat herself down and began a-crying. Well, they began to wonder upstairs how it was that she was so long drawing the beer, and her mother went down to