"No," said Alix, "that's not a good plan at all. It's perfectly stupid.
If you've no better ideas than that, Rafe, we needn't talk about it any
more."
Rafe looked and felt very snubbed indeed.
He was ten, she was nine. But she generally took the lead; not always,
as I daresay you will see when you hear more about them, but
_generally_. They were a nice little pair, and they were constantly
together, at lessons, at play, at everything. This was a convenient
arrangement, for they were a good deal younger than the other brothers
and sisters of the family, and what Rafe would have been without Alix,
or Alix without Rafe, it would be difficult to imagine. But there is
not much use in thinking over about might-have-beens, or
would-have-beens, unless to make us more thankful for what _is_. So it
is enough to say that as things really were, they were very happy
children.
Still they had their troubles, and it was one of these they were
discussing this lovely spring morning, when they were sitting under
their favourite tree--a magnificent ilex in the garden, at one corner of
the great lawn which was one of the beauties of their home.
It was a lovely day, clear and bright and joyous, full of its own
delights, and yet almost fuller of the summer ones to come! This is, I
suppose, the real secret of the charm of spring-time--the promise and
hope it tells of. Everything seemed bursting with good news, the birds
most of all perhaps, though the smiling faces of the early flowers, and
the tender whispers of the gentle wind through the branches, were not
behindhand. But the children's faces were clouded.
This was their trouble. They could not get any one to tell them any
more stories! They had read all their books through, over and over
again, and besides, books aren't _quite_ as nice as "told" stories. At
least not when they have to be shared by two. Rafe and Alix had tried
several plans--reading aloud did not answer _very_ well, and looking
over the pages was worse. They never managed to keep quite together,
and then the one who got down to the last line first was sure to fidget
or to try in some way to hurry up the other, which was apt to lead to
unpleasant results. And besides this, at present there was no question
of story-books, for, as I said, the children had read all they possessed
really _too_ often.
Hitherto perhaps they had been a little spoilt about having stories told
to them. Papa, who was an old soldier, had a good many tales of
adventure; mamma had some lovely ones about "when she was a little
girl." And the big brothers and sisters were very kind too, especially
if Rafe or Alix, or both, as sometimes was the case, happened to be ill.
But their stories were mostly out of books; now and then indeed they
would unluckily turn out to be already known to the children, and though
they did not altogether object to them on this account--I have noticed
that children rather enjoy a book story retold by voice--it was not
always so pleasant for Ena or Jean, or Eric when he was at home from
college. For Rafe and Alix were so exceedingly particular.
"No," one of them would say, just when Eric had got to the most
thrilling part of a robber story, "the entrance to the inner cave was at
the _left_ side of the big one;" or if Jean was describing her heroine's
dress, "It wasn't green--I'm sure it was blue--blue with tiny rosebuds
on," so that sometimes Jean would reply, "Really, children, if you
interrupt so I can't go on," or Eric would go off with a grunt and tell
them to provide stories for themselves.
This had happened the evening before, and this it was which put the idea
into Rafe's mind which Alix snubbed so.
"Suppose," he said, "that we make stories for each other--you for me,
Alix, and I for you?"
It sounded rather nice, but it did not find favour in her eyes at all.
"I know exactly what they'd be," she said; "just mixings up of all our
other ones. It might do to amuse stranger children with, perhaps--but
not for us ourselves. I know all that's in your head, and you know
what's in mine, far too well. So it would be perfectly stupid."
And Rafe had no more to say.
It was Easter holidays--Easter was as late as it could be that year--and
the weather was so beautiful that it really felt like summer. You would
think the children should have been content; but they weren't. They had
no lessons at all to do, and a whole fortnight of nothing you really
must do is, in my opinion, a mistake. During the long summer holidays
Miss Brander, their governess, always left them _something_ to do, just
enough to give a nice fresh taste to the holidaying the rest of their
time, and to prevent their feeling the reins _quite_ loose on their
necks like runaway ponies. And even without this, in the summer it was
different, for they generally went to the seaside or to some hilly place
for a month or so, to have a change of air, and away from home in a new
place time seldom hangs much on children's hands.
This Easter it was certainly doing so a good deal. There were other
reasons too why the little couple felt rather at a loose end, rather
tired of themselves. The big people were all unusually busy, for Ena
was going to be married in June; and she and their mother or she and
Jean were always going somewhere or other to order things, or to give
their opinion about the doing up of the pretty old house, ten miles or
so away, which was to be her new home. And though Ena was very kind
when she had time, and the new brother-to-be held out grand promises of
the visits they were to pay to their sister, and the fun they should
have, still, all that seemed a good way off, and in the meantime Rafe
and Alix felt rather out of it all. I am not sure but that they were
just a little jealous of the new brother. "It's only a pretence sort of
brother," said Alix one day when her feelings had been ruffled. I am
afraid they felt as if he had some how put both their small noses out of
joint.
So now you understand why Rafe and Alix were sitting rather
disconsolately under the ilex, though the sun was shining brightly
enough to melt away all clouds and mists inside as well as outside, any
one would have thought.
In spite of Alix's snub, Rafe looked up again in a minute or two.
"Why don't you think of a better plan, then, if you don't like mine?" he
said. "It's always easy to say things won't do," (which is exceedingly
true!), "but why don't you find something that _will_ do?"
Alix turned round. She was sitting on the end of the rustic bench,
swinging her legs, which was not difficult, as they scarcely reached the
ground, and staring up at the thickly-growing branches overhead. But
now she looked at Rafe--he felt a little nervous; was she going to take
offence at his speech?
No--she had heard what he said, but she was not vexed.
"I know what I wish we _could_ find," she said. "Do you remember, Rafe,
the story of a white lady, up, up in a room at the very top of a castle
somewhere, who was always spinning stories? They came out of the hum of
her spinning-wheel somehow, and the children could hear them when they
sat down on the floor beside her. _Oh_, if we could find somebody like
that!"
"It was fairies," said Rafe doubtfully. "At least the white lady was a
fairy, and there aren't any really, I suppose."
"Everybody says so," Alix replied doubtfully, "but I don't quite see why
there mightn't be. If there have never been any, what began all the
fairy stories? And I know one thing--papa said so himself one day when
he was telling some--what's the word?--it means a sort of a fairy story
that's been told over and over since ever, _ever_ so long ago,
ledge--_what_ is it?"
"Legends, you mean," said her brother. "Yes, I remember papa telling us
some very queer ones he had heard in India."
"And he said there were fairy stories in _every_ country," Alix went on.
"So what _I_ say is there must have been something to make them begin!"
This sounded very convincing to Rafe--Alix certainly had clever ways of
putting things.
"Oh!" he said, with a deep sigh. "If we could but find some one old
enough to remember the beginnings of them--something like the white
lady, you know."
Both children sat silent for a moment or two, their eyes gazing before
them. Suddenly on the short green turf appeared a tiny figure, a wren,
so tame that she hopped fearlessly to within a very short distance of
the little brother and sister, and then, standing still, seemed to look
up at them with her bright eyes, her small head cocked knowingly on one
side.
"Rafe," exclaimed Alix eagerly, though in a low voice.
"Alix," said Rafe in his turn.
Then they looked at each other, thinking the same thoughts.
"Rafe," whispered Alix, while the wren still stood there looking at
them, "just look at her; she's not a bird, she's a fairy--or at least if
she's not a fairy she's got some message for us from one."
The wren hopped on a few steps, still looking back at them. The
children slipped off the seat and moved softly after her without
speaking. On she went, hopping, then fluttering just a little way above
the ground, then hopping again, till in this way she had led them right
across the wide stretch of lawn to some shrubberies at the far side.
Here a small footpath, scarcely visible till you were close to it, led
through the bushes to a strip of half-wild garden ground, used as a sort
of nursery for young trees, which skirted a lane known by the name of
the "Ladywood Path." And indeed it was little more than a path
nowadays, for few passed that way, though the story went that in the old
days it had been a good road leading to a house that was no longer in
existence.
Over the low wall clambered the children, to find to their delight that
the wren was in the lane before them, just a little way ahead. But now
she took to flying higher and faster than she had yet done; to keep up
with her at all they had to run, and even with this they sometimes lost
sight of her altogether for a minute or two. But they kept up bravely--
they were too eager and excited to waste breath by speaking. The race
lasted for some minutes, till at last, just as Alix was about to give
in, Rafe suddenly twitched her arm.
"Stop, Alix," he panted--truth to tell, the running was harder on him
than on his sister, for Rafe was of an easy-going disposition, and not
given to violent exercise--"stop, Alix, she's lighted on the old
gateway."
They both stood still and looked. Yes, there was Madam Wren on the
topmost bar of a dilapidated wooden gate, standing between two solid
posts at what had once been the entrance to the beautiful garden of an
ancient house.
How beautiful neither the children nor any one now living knew, for even
the very oldest inhabitants of that part of the country could only dimly
remember having been told by their grandparents, or great-grandparents
perhaps, how once upon a time Ladywood Hall had been the pride of the
neighbourhood.
The wren flapped her wings, then rose upwards and flew off. This time,
somehow, the children felt that it was no use trying to follow her.
"She's gone for good," said Rafe dolefully; but Alix's eyes sparkled.
"You _are_ stupid," she said. "Don't you see what she's told us. We're
to look for--for something, or some one, I don't quite know what, in the
Lady's garden." For so somehow the grounds of the vanished house had
come to be spoken of. "I think it was very dull of us not to have
thought of it for ourselves, for it is a very fairy sort of place."
"If it is that way," said Rafe, "_they_ must have heard us talking, and
sent the wren to tell us."
"Of course," said Alix, "that's just what I mean. Perhaps the wren is
one herself."
"Shall we go on now?" said Rafe. "No"--for just at that moment the
clear sound of a bell ringing reached them from the direction of their
own home--"for there's our dinner." And dinner was an important event
in Rafe's eyes, even when rivalled by a fairy hunt.
"How provoking," said Alix. "_How_ quickly the morning has gone. We
must go in now or they will come hunting us up and find out all about
it; and you know, Rafe, if it has anything to do with fairies we must
keep it a secret."
Rafe nodded his head sagely.
"Of course," he replied. "When do you think we had best come? This
afternoon we are going a walk with nurse, and she'd never let us off."
"No," said Alix, with a sigh, for a walk with nurse was not a very
interesting affair. "But I'll tell you what, Rafe; if I can get hold of
mamma to-night, just even for a minute, I'll ask her if we mayn't take
something for dinner out with us to-morrow, and not come in till
tea-time--the way we sometimes did last summer; for just now it's really
as fine and warm as if it was June. I think she'll let us."
"I do hope she will," said the boy.