"She was still bending over the basin when she heard a tap, tap, tap."
"A fairy godmother," thought Una. "I didn't know they lived in Fairyland."
Then she went to meet the old lady, giving a quaint little curtsey and waiting for her to speak.
"Well, little girl," said the old lady kindly, "and who are you?"
"I'm Una," said the child gravely.
Then she gave a sudden jump in the air.
"Oh, fairy-godmother, how kind of you—there's my puppy dog!" she cried, as a fat retriever puppy gambolled down the path and flung itself playfully upon her.
The old lady looked amused.
"A fairy godmother, am I?" she said, smiling. "What can I do for you, then?"
"Oh, such a lot of things!" said Una. Then a surprised look came into her face: "Why, here's an old gentleman!" she said. "I didn't know there were fairy godfathers too. Do you live in Fairyland together?"
The old lady laughed outright.
"Dear child, do you think this is Fairyland?" she asked.
"Isn't it Fairyland?" said Una. "Oh, dear, I thought it must be when I came through the little door."
"The little door?" said the old lady. "Where is that?"
"The door in the wall," said Una. "I found it yesterday when I was in the wood, and I thought it was one of the doors to Fairyland."
"Ah! the little door at the end of the apple walk," said the old lady "I had almost forgotten it, it is so long since it has been used—and I thought it was locked, too," she added, half to herself. "Edward," she said, raising her voice a little as she spoke to the old gentleman, "here is a little girl who has found her way into our garden thinking it was Fairyland."
"And a very nice kind of Fairyland too," said the old gentleman, "especially when this kind of little fairy comes to visit us," and he held out his hand to Una kindly.
"You are the little girl from the Grange, are you not?" asked the old lady; then, remembering some rather queer tales she had heard of the new people at the Grange, she asked no more questions, but said that tea would soon be ready, and invited Una to stay and have it with them.
After all it was almost as nice as being in Fairyland, Una thought, as they sat under a large cherry tree covered with snowy blossoms, and drank tea out of the thinnest of china cups, each one shaped like a different flower, with a beetle or a bird or a butterfly for the handle. The clearest of honeycomb was on the table, which the old gentleman had sent for especially for Una; and the black puppy sat at her side all tea-time, opening his wet, black mouth for tastes of bread and butter, and rubbing his head against her knee if she forgot to give him any.
When tea was over Una looked at the sun.
"Oh, dear," she said, "the sun is getting quite low, and Marie will think I am lost."
"Dear, dear! We ought to have thought of that," said the old lady. "Will not your father be anxious also?"
"Papa is away from home for a few days," said Una.
Then she made a little curtsey.
"May I go now, please?" she asked; and the old lady walked with her as far as the little door.
"Come another afternoon to Fairyland," she said, as she stooped to kiss the little girl.
Una promised readily, and only remembered when she was half way through the wood that her father did not like her to visit at strange houses.
"I'll tell him where I've been directly he comes home to-morrow," she thought.
But when she pushed her way through the bushes in the Grange garden she saw her father coming quickly across the lawn towards her, with a short, stout gentleman beside him.
"My little girl, where have you been?" he said. "Marie came to me in great distress just now and told me that Mademoiselle Una was lost, and we have been looking for you everywhere."
"Father, dear father, don't be angry, please," said Una coaxingly; "but I've been to tea this afternoon with a dear old lady and gentleman, and they live in the loveliest garden in the world—at least I think it must be. And they want me to come again; and I do want to go very much, please, father. So don't say 'no,' as you do when I want to go to tea with Norah and Dan. Please, please, father, say 'yes.'"
Monsieur Gen hesitated and glanced towards his friend. But the little stout gentleman was frowning, and Una thought what a disagreeable man he was, and wished that he had not come home with her father, when they might have had such a nice evening together, just he and she alone.
"It is not wise to let the child go anywhere she likes among strangers. You know what children's tongues are like, and how easily stories get afloat," the stranger said in French.
But Una understood French as well as she understood English, and she felt very angry with the stranger for trying to persuade her father not to let her go and see the dear old lady and gentleman again.
"No, dear. You must learn to stay quietly here in the garden," said her father; and Una said no more then, but walked slowly across the lawn into the house and upstairs to the nursery, where she was scolded by old Marie for having run away by herself that afternoon.
And it was not until some hours later—after she had watched the strange gentleman driving away to the station—that she ran downstairs to the library and asked the question which had been puzzling her little brain for the last few weeks.
"Father," she said, "I want to know why I mayn't go and see other little boys and girls, and go to church, and go to see the people in the cottages, as Norah and Tom and Ruth do."
CHAPTER VII.
SECRETS.
"What makes you ask that question, Una?" said her father. "When we have lived in other countries you have never asked to have little boys and girls to play with, or worried about why you may not go and see people and go to church; and here you have Norah and Tom and Dan to play with. Surely that is enough?"
"But I didn't know before that little boys and girls did play with each other," said Una—"at least, when I saw other little boys and girls playing with each other I thought they were brothers and sisters, or cousins, and, of course, I haven't got any brothers or sisters or cousins of my very own; but now that I know what little boys and girls do, I do want to go to church and go to tea with them in their houses, and do things like them. Please, father, let me!" And Una clasped her hands coaxingly as she thought of the dear old lady and gentleman she had been to tea with, that afternoon.
The flower-filled garden, the yellow honeycomb, the gold-fish and the black puppy—and the cockatoo the old gentleman had promised to show her the next time she came—all floated through her brain as she waited for her father's answer. But Monsieur Gen shook his head.
"No, dear," he said.
To himself he was thinking that perhaps he had been foolish to allow Una to be friends with the vicar's children at all; he might have known that it would make her restless, and dissatisfied with the quiet life she had been quite content to live before.
Then he roused himself and looked down kindly at his little girl.
"Are you very disappointed? Poor little Una!" he said, putting his arm round her and drawing her to his side. "Don't look so sad, and I will try and explain to you why it is that you have never had little friends and companions of your own age."
Una looked at him, still gravely, but with the light of a growing interest in her eyes. Then she fetched a little stool and sat down at her father's feet.
"You must know, Una dear," said her father, smiling rather sadly, as he looked down at her, "that each one of us has some kind of work to do in the world. We may do it badly or we may do it well, or we may not even try to do it at all, but each one of us ought to try to do something to help our fellow-men. Do you understand, little one?"
Una nodded.
"Yes, father; I quite understand," she said.
It was not often that her father talked in this way—it was rather like listening to the vicar's sermon the only Sunday she had ever been to church, she thought, as she leant her head against her father's knee; and Monsieur Gen went on speaking:
"Well, dear, sometimes people can help each other to do their bits of work in the world, and sometimes, too, they can spoil other people's work; and there are some people who are trying very hard to spoil the work which I am doing."
Una sprang to her feet.
"Father! How dare they?" she said indignantly. "Horrid people, … I hate them!"
Her father reached out his hand and drew her to him.
"But as long as they cannot find out exactly what I am doing," he said, "or how I am doing it, they cannot really spoil my work; and that is why I have never made friends with people in any of the different places where we have stayed, in case the people who want to spoil my work should try and find out through these new friends who I am, and what I am doing. And that is why I want you, my little Una, to help me to keep my work as secret as possible."
"Oh, father, I will, I will!" cried Una. "Only—only I don't quite see how I can let out a secret if I don't exactly know what it is."
"I cannot tell you all the secret, little Una," said her father—"at least not until you are older and can understand more about it. But if I were to let you make friends and go about wherever you like people would begin to wonder where you came from, and who you were, and to ask you questions about me and what I did; and although not really knowing my secret, you might let out little bits of it, until people began to wonder and talk about you and me. One can never be too careful," he added, half to himself.
"Yes, I understand, father," said Una gravely; and she sat at her father's feet, looking into the fire and not talking much, until the little clock on the mantelpiece struck seven, and Marie came to tell her that it was bedtime.
"I wonder whether I was wise in telling her so much," Monsieur Gen thought to himself, when his little daughter had gone. "But it seemed the only thing to be done, and she is prudent beyond her years, poor little, lonely girl. I do not think she will chatter about anything I have told her."
For some time after this Una was rather quiet and sad, more like what she had been when Norah and Dan first got to know her, and not nearly so ready to laugh and play as she had been of late.
The secret her father had told her weighed heavily on the little girl's mind—she was so afraid that she might have let out to her little friends, though unknowingly, something about her father's work, and she was careful now not to say anything which might lead them to ask questions about him.
One afternoon she was walking by herself in the wood, when she came across Tom seated on the ground with a number of paper bags and packages strewn around him.
