Note 9 — The Little Cake-bird

The Piskeys looked at one another with a peculiar expression in their round little eyes when the child spoke of putting a bit of her Christmas cake on the step of the door for them, and one said, ‘Dear little maid!’ and another said ‘Pretty child!’ and one little fellow, with a beard reaching to his feet, cried, ‘How kind of her to want us poor little Piskeys to have part in the Christmas joy!’ One little Dinky Man whispered: ‘Perhaps it is not true what the old whiddle9 says, after all—that we are not good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell. The child does not think so, evidently, or she would not be so anxious for us to share her little Christmas cake.’