"So you may. I'm glad you feel that way about it. Little girls should never have secrets they cannot tell their mothers. In three days you may tell her, if you think it would be right to keep silence that long."
"Oh, that will not be very long. I could keep the secret longer if you said so."
"That will be long enough. Now, shut your eyes while you count one hundred slowly or the queen of the fairies will not let me appear again. The spell will be broken if you so much as peep, or if you do not count aloud."
Nan closed her eyes very tight and began to count. She gave a little interrupting gasp as she felt a light kiss on her cheek, but she kept steadily on till she had reached the desired number. Then she opened her eyes and looked around. There was no one in sight. The afternoon sun was sinking behind the trees, and the cows were returning home along the county road. With the weight of such a secret as she had never before carried, Nan ran home in a happy tumult of excited expectation. At the back of the house she came upon Mary Lee and Phil still absorbed in their polywogs.
"Come see," cried Mary Lee, "they are too funny for anything, Nan. They are the interestingest things I ever saw."
Nan went up to look. "What is so wonderful about polywogs?" she asked.
"You'd think yourself wonderful," said Phil indignantly, "if you could change yourself from a swimming beast into a hopping one and be as awfully amphibious as they are."
Nan laughed and drew her finger slowly through the water in the cask. "They aren't half so wonderful as fairies," she said. "They can change themselves into all sorts of things."
"Oh, pshaw! Everybody knows that there are no real fairies. These can really change before your very eyes; we've watched them from day to day, haven't we, Mary Lee?"