As soon as she had shut the door and set a chair-- "You have fairy blood in you," said she, looking hard at me.
"How do you know that ?" "You could not have got so far into this wood if it were not so; and I am trying to find out some trace of it in your countenance.

I think I see it." "What do you see ?" "Oh, never mind: I may be mistaken in that." "But how then do you come to live here ?" "Because I too have fairy blood in me." Here I, in my turn, looked hard at her, and thought I could perceive, notwithstanding the coarseness of her features, and especially the heaviness of her eyebrows, a something unusual--I could hardly call it grace, and yet it was an expression that strangely contrasted with the form of her features.

I noticed too that her hands were delicately formed, though brown with work and exposure.
"I should be ill," she continued, "if I did not live on the borders of the fairies' country, and now and then eat of their food.

And I see by your eyes that you are not quite free of the same need; though, from your education and the activity of your mind, you have felt it less than I.You may be further removed too from the fairy race." I remembered what the lady had said about my grandmothers.
Here she placed some bread and some milk before me, with a kindly apology for the homeliness of the fare, with which, however, I was in no humour to quarrel.

I now thought it time to try to get some explanation of the strange words both of her daughter and herself.
"What did you mean by speaking so about the Ash ?" She rose and looked out of the little window.