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?"
CHAPTER IV.
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——"
