She swept Aunt Hannah out of her mind, and began to plan something which consoled her.

When would they have their stupid prayers and let her get upstairs?
David meanwhile hung about the kitchen.

He would have liked to ask Uncle Reuben about the pool and 'Lias's story, but Hannah was bustling about, and he never mentioned 'Lias in her hearing.

To do so would have been like handing over something weak, for which he had a tenderness, to be worried.
But he rummaged out an old paper-covered guide to the Peak, which he remembered to have been left at the farm one summer's day by a passing tourist, who paid Hannah handsomely for some bread and cheese.

Turning to the part which concerned Clough End, Hayfield, and the Scout, he found:-- 'In speaking of the Mermaiden's Pool, it may be remarked that the natives of several little hamlets surrounding Kinder Scout have long had a tradition that there is a beautiful woman--an English Hamadryad--lives in the side of the Scout; that she comes to bathe every day in the Mermaid's Well, and that the man who has the good luck to behold her bathing will become immortal and never die.' David shut the book and fell pondering, like many another wiser mortal before him, on the discrepancies of evidence.