"'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.
CHAPTER V.
HAPPY DAYS.
Nearly every day, after that first meeting, the children played with Una in the wood and joined her in the glen.
"The glen's nicer now it's Una's than when it was ours," said Dan one day, as he sat munching one of the nice little sugar cakes which Marie had made for them that morning.
"It wasn't ever ours really," said Norah.
"Well, anyway, it's Una's now, and it's much nicer," said Dan, looking gravely into the basket Una held out to him, and choosing a round, pink cake with a cherry in the middle.
Then one day something still nicer came to pass. The foreign gentleman came to call on Mr. Carew, to ask if he would allow his children to come every day and have lessons with his little girl.
The children were delighted when they heard of this. They had met the foreign gentleman in the lane as they were coming home from a walk with Rose, and they had wondered whether he had been to see their father.
"I hope he has not been to say we mustn't go and play with Una in the glen any more," Dan had said; but they had no idea what the foreign gentleman's visit had really been about until their father told them the next morning, after breakfast.
Mr. and Mrs. Carew had needed a little time in which to think about and talk over Monsieur Gen's proposal, and they did not want the children to know anything about it until all was settled.
For the last year—ever since Mary and Ruth had gone to school, and since Miss Rice, the governess who had been with them for over six years, had got married—the younger children had only had lessons when their mother or father could find time to teach them.
The school fees of the four elder children came to so large a sum of money that the vicar could not afford to have a governess at home for Norah and Tom and Dan; and as both Mr. and Mrs. Carew led very busy lives, lessons had sometimes to be put on one side altogether, and the children were beginning to forget a great deal which they had learned a year ago with Miss Rice.
The foreign gentleman's offer, therefore, had been a great relief to Mr. and Mrs. Carew, and the children were delighted at the idea of going to the Grange every day to do their lessons with Una.
"And we shall be able to tell Una more about the Bible now, shan't we, father?" said Norah. "She wants to know such a lot more. Nobody has ever told her about Christmas before—that it is Jesus Christ's birthday, I mean; and that that is why everyone is so happy then and tries to make everyone else happy, just like He used to do. And she didn't know God made the world, or that He takes care of us, or anything."
"Poor little girl!" said Mrs. Carew.
"Poor child, indeed!" said the vicar. "I wonder why Monsieur Gen——," and then he stopped suddenly, thinking, no doubt, that the children were quite curious enough already about their foreign neighbours. "After all, it is not for us to pry into other people's affairs," he said, with a smile. "Teach little Una all you can about the Bible and God's love, Norah; but do not worry her with questions about her father and his doings."
A week later the children went to the Grange for their first morning's lessons with Una.
"I feel just as if we were going into a magic palace," whispered Norah, as they waited for the door to be opened.
"And as if we should be turned into snakes and wolves and all sorts of horrid animals, before we came out again," said Tom.
"Or into one of those marble statues," whispered Dan, as they followed the servant across the hall to the foot of the staircase, where another servant met them and led the way upstairs. At the end of a long passage he paused and flung open a door, standing aside for the children to pass.
"Here lives the wizard!" murmured Tom under his breath; but it was only little Una who advanced to meet them across the big, bare room, bowing primly to each of the three in turn, then turning to introduce the English governess who was seated at a table near the window.
"Miss Berrill, my good English gouvernante," she said; and Miss Berrill smiled at the child's introduction, and told her to go with her little friends to take off their hats and coats, and that then she would try to find out how much they all knew.
The children thoroughly enjoyed those morning lessons and the hour of play afterwards. Week after week glided by until the Christmas holidays drew near, and pale, silent, little Una seemed turned into a different child.
In vain had the children begged for her to spend Christmas Day with them at the vicarage.
"My daughter does not visit," Monsieur Gen had replied; and the children felt that there was nothing more to be said.
They still stood very much in awe of Una's tall grave father, who looked in upon them now and again while they were at lessons or play, but never stopped to chat or romp with his little girl; and merely bent his head in acknowledgment of the stiff little curtsey with which Una always greeted him in obedience to Marie's directions.
On the afternoon of Christmas Day the children carried a small parcel of home-made gifts and almond toffee to Una; then stayed with her to sing some Christmas hymns and carols, and to tell her over again that wonderful old story of the first Christmas morning so many years ago.
With eager face and hungry eyes Una drank in Norah's words, turning to Tom every now and then for the explanation of some difficult word, or to Dan for a description of that Eastern stable; and long after the children had gone back to the merry home circle where "Peace" and "Goodwill," welcome angels, hovered around, the little foreigner sat gazing at the simple print, in its plain oak frame, of the Magi worshipping the Infant Christ,—a gift from the vicar to his children's friend.
January, February, March, April passed by, and one sunny morning in May Una awoke with the feeling that something very wonderful had happened the day before.
For a few moments she could not think what it was, as she lay listening dreamily to the songs of the birds outside; then all at once she remembered.
The day before she had been for a long walk with old Marie through the wood. Neither of them had ever been so far before; but Una had coaxed her old Nurse first up one winding path, then down another—begging her to walk just as far as the bluebells they could see in the distance, or to the tall fir-trees where they could listen to the wood-pigeons cooing overhead, or "just a little further," on the chance of catching a glimpse of the cuckoo they had heard calling all the afternoon—until old Marie had sat down on the stump of a tree, fanning herself with a handkerchief, and declaring that she could walk no more.
"Just a little further—only a little way more, Marie, please," Una begged. "I only want to see if the white flowers over there are the dog-daisies Tom told me about. Such a funny name, isn't it? Daisies which belong to the dogs!" And the little girl laughed merrily.
"No more, no more, Miss Una," the old Frenchwoman said. "You may run on by yourself for a little way, like a good child, if you keep within call." And Marie closed her eyes drowsily—quite overcome with the long walk and the warm afternoon—while Una hunted for birds' nests among the bushes, and added more blossoms to the already large bunch of flowers she had picked as she came along.
She had wandered further away from old Marie than she knew, when she came suddenly to a high, ivy-covered wall, and was able to go no further.
On either side it stretched away from her. The little girl was not able to see where the wall began or where it ended, and she thought that this must be the end of the wood at last, for the wall was so high that she could not see if trees grew on the other side of it.
Presently she began to hunt for birds' nests among the ivy—Tom had told her once that wrens and robins often built in ivy-covered walls—and then it was that she had made the wonderful discovery.
There, in the old brick wall, half hidden by the ivy, was a tiny oak door.
