“Fairies? Why, what makes you think it was fairies?” asked Mr. Thornton, “though I must confess that I don’t know what else it could have been.”
“I looked out of the window,” said Rose, “and I saw two little creatures run into the woods as fast as they could go. One was a little girl and one was a little boy, and I think they were fairies who had been ringing our door-bell.”
“Pooh-pooh! Fairies don’t ring doorbells,” said her father. “And at this time in the morning it isn’t likely that any of the island children were ringing our bell and running away, as the naughty boys do in the city sometimes. I don’t understand it at all. But the noise has stopped, so let us finish our naps, as Kenneth is doing. He is the wisest of us all, not to bother his head about it.”
And so they all went back to bed and slept soundly until breakfast time.
At the breakfast table the first thing Kenneth said was,—
“Oh, goodness me! I was going to fish with Captain Prout at four o’clock in the morning. But I didn’t wake up. How he will laugh at me! But why didn’t my alarm clock go off?”
“Alarm clock?” said his father. “So you set the alarm, did you? Well, that accounts for everything. What a sleepy head you are, Kenneth!”
Yes, that accounted for everything, except for Rose’s fairies. They never were accounted for. And indeed, those poor little fairies never again dared visit that scene of their terrible early-morning alarm.
CHAPTER XIII
BROTHERS AND SISTERS
THE summer passed away only too quickly, as summers do, and almost before the children knew it the fall had come, and it was time to go back to the city to school. It was very hard for Kenneth and Rose to leave the island, with all its beautiful playgrounds and wonderful playthings, so different from what one has in the city. And yet it was pleasant to be back in the city, too, to see all their little friends again, and to begin new studies at school. Kenneth and Rose soon forgot to long for the beach, and the rocks, and the woods behind their little summer home, they were so happy in their other home in the city. They scarcely ever thought of the island nowadays, and when they did it seemed very far away and unreal, almost like an island in a dream. They forgot that there were people still living there to whom this was the only home; people who would be there all through the long winter, when the rough winds would sweep through those evergreen trees, whew! so loudly, and the waves would dash up over the bare rocks, splash! so fiercely, while all the island lay cold and dreary and deserted, wrapped in a blanket of snow.