THE LITTLE FOREIGN GIRL.
Before the children had time to shake hands with the old gentleman,
Snap darted forward and sprang upon him eagerly--not barking or
sniffing round his feet and ankles, as he usually did to strangers,
making them feel as if he were looking out for a nice place for a bite,
but jumping up and throwing himself upon him with little yelps of
delight, behaving, indeed, just as he always did if he thought anyone
was going to take him for a walk.
And what do you think the old gentleman said? He said: "Down Snap,
down Snap!" rather crossly and in a voice that the children knew quite
well; and almost before they had time to think how funny it was that he
should know their dog's name, or, indeed, to wonder about anything at
all, Snap made another frantic leap, and seizing hold of the old
gentleman's white beard, dragged it off his chin, and darted off round
the table with it in his mouth, shaking it as if it were a rabbit or a
rat!
"Philip! Oh, Philip!" cried the children.
And Philip it was; naughty Philip, who had dressed himself up that wet
afternoon to pretend that he was the foreign gentleman from the Grange;
and, indeed, he had taken them all in finely.
"Oh, Philip! Philip! Why didn't I guess who you were?" cried Mary, as
her brother leant back laughing against the sofa-cushions. "And fancy
my not knowing my own sash!" pointing to the crimson waistcoat,
which--now that her brother had thrown off his coat--she saw was her
own best silk sash wound round and round him.
"And father's great coat!" said Ruth.
"And the white horsehair stuff out of the fireplace," said Philip,
pointing to the empty grate. "It made a good beard, didn't it?"
"And the cap, Philip? Where did you get the cap from?" asked Mary.
"It's the lining out of my old straw hat," said Philip laughing. "Oh,
_didn't_ I take you all in!"
The next day the three elder children went back to school, and would
very likely have forgotten all about the new people at the Grange if
Tom and Norah had not written long letters from home telling them some
of the strange tales which were being told in the village about the
Grange tenants.
The foreign gentleman--Monsieur Gen as he was called--only left the
grounds once a week, when he drove to the station in a closed carriage,
and no information could be got out of the two old men-servants, who
were the only other people in the house besides the little girl and her
elderly nurse.
"Queer kind of folk too, them servants be," Giles, the baker, said one
day to Rose, the little maid who usually took the children for walks
when their mother was too busy to go with them. "There's one of them
jabbers double-Dutch, and the other talks Dutch-double--except the few
English words he's picked up since he's been here; and the names of all
the foods--he knows them right enough!" And Giles laughed aloud at his
own joke.
The children listened eagerly. They were always interested in hearing
anything about the people at the Grange, and Norah often lay awake at
night weaving strange fancies about the little girl who looked so sad
and who must lead such a lonely life.
October was nearly at an end, however, before they saw the little
foreign girl once more.
It was a bright, sunny afternoon; and Norah and Dan had gone to look
for chestnuts in the wood.
They often went out alone, these two, when Tom was doing lessons with
his father and Rose busy about the house; for, although rather a
harum-scarum little damsel as a rule, Norah was always careful of Dan;
and Mrs. Carew knew that so long as they kept away from the main road,
with its never-ending whir of motorcars, Norah could be trusted with
Dan anywhere; and the little girl felt very proud and happy as she
pushed Dan's invalid chair down the drive, and knew that her little
brother was in her charge for the afternoon.
Dan had fallen out of his perambulator when quite a tiny baby, and had
twisted his back in some way, so that he would never be tall and strong
like Stephen and Philip, or sturdy and straight like Tom; but he was a
very happy little boy all the same, after a strange, quiet fashion of
his own, and he liked best of all to be alone with Norah in the woods
or by the river, when they would make up all sorts of fancies about
queer little elves and fairies who, they said, lived in the trees or
bushes, and in the sticklebacks' nests in the river.
It was so warm in the wood, this afternoon, that it felt almost like
summer as the children hunted for chestnuts among the leaves, Dan
leaning out of his chair and poking about with a walking stick, and
Norah bringing the burrs to him as she found them, so that he might
break them open and thread the nuts on to a piece of string he had
brought with him.
"Dan," said Norah suddenly, when they had found quite a lot of
chestnuts and were beginning to be rather tired of looking for them,
"shall we go and see if the gap in the fence is still there? It's
quite early still, and it's not so very far away."
"Oh, yes," said Dan. "It's such a long time since we've been there.
Do you think, if it's not filled up, we might go in just for a minute?"
Norah shook here head.
"No, I don't think we can," she said. "You know father said we had
been trespassing when we went there before, and nobody lived there
then, so I suppose it would be _more_ trespassing still if we went now;
that's why we've never been to look at it all this time, because I knew
if we did we should want to go in."
Dan sighed.
"And however much we want, this afternoon, we mustn't go in," he said.
"I almost wish the people hadn't come to the Grange, Norah; it used to
be so nice when we used to go and sit on our own little bank there, and
nobody else ever came."
"But we couldn't go now, even if it was empty," said Norah, "because
father said---- Oh, Dan!" she exclaimed, breaking off suddenly, "the
gap is still there! Do you think I might peep through?"
"Yes," said Dan. "_That's_ not trespassing. People often stop and
look in at our gate, and we don't mind a bit. Do go and look in,
Norah; you can leave me here in the chair, and if it looks _very_ nice
you must come and help me down the bank just to peep through once more."
Norah crept through the bushes cautiously, and popped her head in at
the gap. Then she gave a little gasp of surprise.
There on Norah's own particular seat--a mossy stone shaped very like a
stumpy armchair--sat the foreign little girl reading a book.
She raised her head and looked at Norah gravely.
[Illustration: She raised her head and looked at Norah gravely.]
They were a strange contrast--the pale, delicate-looking, little
dark-eyed foreigner, and fair-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked Norah.
For a few moments they looked at each other in silence, then the
foreign child spoke.
"You are the little girl I saw on the other side of the gate," she
said, speaking slowly and distinctly, as if she wanted to be quite sure
of saying the English words in the right way. "And all the other boys
and girls--are they also with you?"
"No," said Norah, "only Dan."
For the first time in her short life she felt shy and awkward. The
little girl spoke so precisely and had such dignified manners, "almost
like a grown-up princess," as Norah said afterwards when telling her
mother all about it; but if she had only known, the little girl was
really a great deal shyer than she was, and had never before spoken to
another little girl.
"And Dan--is he there?" she asked. "I don't think I do very much like
boys."
"Oh, you would like Dan," said Norah quickly. "Everyone likes Dan. He
_will_ be surprised when I tell him that you were sitting in our own
glen. We always call it 'our glen,' because nobody else knows about
it, and it looks quite the kind of place for fairies to come and play
in, doesn't it?"
"I don't think I know what you mean," said the little girl in a puzzled
kind of way. "What are fairies?"