He blew a long whiff of smoke and watched it melt away over a bed of mignonette among the blue shadows where the dusk gathered beneath the ilex trees. There, for a moment, his eye followed it, and just as it sifted off into transparency he became aware with a start of surprise that behind the bushes something was moving. He looked closer.
‘It’s stopped,’ he muttered; ‘but only a second ago it was moving—moving parallel with myself.’
Paul was well accustomed to watching the motions of wild creatures in the forest; his eye was trained like the eye of an Indian. The gloom at first was too dense for anything to differentiate itself from their general mass, but after a short inspection his sight detected little bits of shadow that were lighter or darker than other little bits. The moving thing began to assume outline.
‘It’s a person!’ he decided. ‘It’s somebody watching—watching me!’
He took a step forward, and the figure likewise advanced, keeping even pace with him. He went faster, and the figure also went faster; it moved very silently, very softly, ‘like an Indian,’ he thought with admiration. Behind the Blue Summer-house, where they sometimes had tea on wet days, it disappeared.
‘There are no cattle-stealers, or timber-sneaks in this country,’ he reflected, ‘but there are burglars. Perhaps this is a burglar who knows Margaret is away and thinks—’
He had not time to finish what the burglar thought, for at that moment, at the top of the Long Walk, where the moonlight already lay in a patch, the figure suddenly dashed out at full speed from the cover of the bushes, and he beheld, not a burglar, but—a little girl in a blue frock with a broad white collar, and long, black spindle legs.
‘Nixie, my dear child!’ he exclaimed. ‘But aren’t you in bed?’
It was a stupid question of course, and she did not attempt to answer it, but came up close to him, picking her way neatly between the flower-beds. The moon gleamed on her shiny black shoes and on her shiny yellow hair; over her summer dress she wore a red cloak, but it was open and only held to her by two thin bands about the neck. Under the hood he saw her elf-like face, the expression grave, but the eyes bright with excitement, and she moved softly over the grass like a shadow, timidly, yet without hesitation. A small, warm hand stole into his.
Paul put his pipe, still alight, into his pocket like a naughty boy caught smoking, and turned to face her.