FAIRIES.
"Don't know what fairies are? Oh, how funny!" said Norah. "You must
get Dan to tell you about them; he knows ever so much more about them
than I do. That is my seat you're sitting on now, and that is Dan's
seat over there," pointing to a mossy corner, and quite forgetting that
the glen belonged to the little foreign girl now, and that she and Dan
had no longer any right to it.
The little foreign girl rose to her feet quickly.
"Won't you come and sit here now?" she said. "Please do! And won't
Dan come and sit on his seat too?" glancing towards the corner Norah
had pointed out.
Norah felt that she had been rather rude, and hastened to make amends.
"No, I don't think we can come to-day," she said, "though thank you
very much for asking us; and it was very rude of me to have said the
seats belonged to us," added the little girl, getting rather red. "Of
course, the glen is yours now, and the seats too."
"Oh, but do come and sit in it sometimes," said the other child
eagerly. "I am always, always alone all day, except for old Marie; and
it would be so nice to have someone, not quite big, to talk to."
"We will come to-morrow," said Norah,--she felt very sorry for the
little girl when she spoke so sadly of being alone all day--"but I must
go now. I can hear Dan calling, and it is getting late."
"Good-bye," said the little girl. "Won't you tell me your name,
please?"
"Norah--Norah Carew."
"And mine is Una. Good-bye, Norah. Please do come to-morrow."
"Yes, I promise we will come, unless it rains; and then, of course, you
wouldn't be out either," said Norah. "Good-bye."
"Norah!" said Dan severely, as his sister pushed her way up through the
bushes to the top of the bank, "you have been a _very_ long time down
in the glen, and I have called you lots and lots of times and you
wouldn't answer. I think you must have heard!"
"Dan, dear, really I didn't hear," said Norah. "I was talking to the
little foreign girl. Didn't you hear us? She was sitting in our glen,
and her name is Una, and she is a _very_ nice little girl; and she
wants us to come and see her to-morrow, and I said we would if it was
fine. Aren't you pleased, Dan?"
"Yes," said Dan, "very! I heard you talking to someone, and that is
why I wanted to come down too. That's what made me cross, Norah; but I
think the crossness has all gone away now, and I do want to hear about
the little foreign girl, please," and Dan leant back comfortably in his
chair as his sister began to wheel him over the mossy ground.
"Poor Dan!" said Norah; "it was horrid of me not to have heard you
calling."
"I thought perhaps you were talking to a fairy," said Dan.
Norah laughed.
"I wish it had been a fairy," she said. "I would have wished for ever
so many things. Oh dear, Dan, look at the sun! it's quite low, and
mother will be wondering where we are."
"Here's Tom," said Dan. "Mother must have sent him to look for us."
Long before Tom reached them, however, he had begun to cry aloud his
news.
"Mother's gone away! Aunt Edna's ill, and they sent a telegram for
mother. Father's gone too, but he is coming back to-morrow."
"Oh, Tom!" said Norah.
And, "Oh, Tom!" echoed Dan blankly. It seemed so terrible to think of
going home and finding no mother or father there.
"Who's going to look after us, and everything?" asked Dan.
"Kate is going to look after the house, and I'm to look after
you--mother said so," said Tom importantly.
But the next morning Master Tom forgot his charge, and went off on some
expedition of his own; and Norah and Dan were left on their own devices
once more.
"I am glad father is coming back this evening," said Norah, as she
pushed Dan's wheelchair through the wood on their way to see Una.
"So am I," said Dan; "but I do wish mother was coming too."
A low laugh sounded from somewhere close at hand, and Norah stopped
wheeling the chair and looked about her.
"Norah, do you think it's fairies?" whispered Dan.
He had hardly said the words when a little girl sprang suddenly into
the path in front of them. She was dressed in some soft, thick, white
material, and had a long gauzy white shawl thrown over her head and
shoulders.
"It's Una!" said Norah, and her little brother gave a sigh of
disappointment. He had really almost thought that the little girl
might be a fairy as she danced lightly on the path before them.
"I thought I would come and meet you to-day," said Una, "so I came
through the--what do you call it?--the gap; and then when I heard you
coming, I hid. I thought it might be someone I did not know, and Marie
does not like me to be out alone."
"Is Marie your nurse?" asked Norah.
"Yes," said the little girl; "my very good nurse from the country of
France."
"Are you a little French girl, then?" asked Dan.
Una looked at him gravely.
"No," she said. "I am cos--cos--it is such a very long word that I
always forget it--cos-mo-pol-i-tan," she said slowly.
"Oh," said Norah, "that is a long word. And is that the name of the
country where you come from?"
"I don't know," said Una. "Papa told me to tell anyone who asked me
that I was cosmo--, you know, the long word again; and I think it means
belonging to lots of different countries. Papa said it meant something
like that when I asked him once; and we have lived in so many countries
that I can't remember all the names."
"How nice to have lived in lots of different countries," said Dan.
"When I'm a man I mean to be an explorer and go to every country in the
world."
Norah looked a little unhappy. She always felt sad when Dan talked
about all he meant to do when he was grown up, for she knew that he
would never be strong enough to travel about the world as he wished.
"Why don't you be an author, Dan, and write books?" she said, "or a
great painter, or a clergyman, like father?"
"I might be a clergyman," said Dan, "but if I was I should be a
missionary, and go and preach to black people. Oh, Una!" he said,
breaking off suddenly, "do you know, twice now I have thought you were
a fairy--once when you were talking to Norah yesterday, and again
to-day. And do you know what I was going to ask you if you had been a
fairy? To give me and Norah a carpet so that we could go wherever we
liked. Mother read us a tale about a fairy carpet last winter."
Again the puzzled look which Norah had noticed the day before came into
Una's face.
"I don't know what you do mean," she said. "What are fairies? Are
they people, or just little children?"
"Why," said Dan, "fairies are dear little people who live in a lovely
country called Fairyland, and nobody knows where that country is--only
there are lots and lots of doors to fairyland if only we knew where to
find them.
"Norah and I have looked for a fairy door everywhere," he went on, "but
we have never found one yet. And we have never found a fairy either,
though we know _exactly_ what we should ask her for if we did see one;
and fairies do come out of fairyland sometimes; it says so in nearly
all the fairy-tale books. Let's all wish now!" he cried suddenly.
"Out loud, you know, so that if there _should_ be a fairy hiding
somewhere around she'll hear what we are asking for, and perhaps give
it us!"
"Oh, but Dan----," Norah was beginning, when Una sprang to her feet and
made a queer sort of little dance in front of them.
"Fairies! fairies!" she cried, clapping her hands as though she were a
little fairy queen herself, calling all her little people together. "I
want father to be quite happy, please, and not to have to work so hard
in that nasty dark study, and I want some little boys and girls to play
with and do lessons with, just as if they were my very own brothers and
sisters; and I want a puppy-dog for my very own, please, fairies,
and----"
[Illustration: "'Fairies! fairies!' she cried, clapping her hands."]
"Oh, Una, Una! stop!" cried Norah. "You are spoiling all your wishes
saying them out loud like that. Fairies never grant people's wishes if
they call them out loud for everyone to hear."
But whether there were any fairies hiding in the wood that afternoon or
not, at any rate one of little Una's wishes came true, as we shall see.