DREAMIKINS
[CHAPTER I]
The Little Door
FREDA and Daffy stood on the edge of a Great Discovery.
Have you ever done it? Then you will know how they felt; how their small hearts were thumping loudly; how to the tips of their toes and fingers they were trembling with that wonderful joyful excitement of the unknown in front of them.
They were just two small girls, very slim, with long legs and short frocks—holland frocks—smocked across their chests, and they wore limp sunburnt straw hats which kept the sun out of their eyes, for it was a very hot day in June.
Freda was the elder of the two; she had red-golden hair, which was plaited in a long pigtail, and a freckled face, blue eyes, and a delicate little mouth and nose, with a very round determined chin. She was always intensely earnest in everything that she did; untiring in schemes that would unite pleasure with usefulness—as, when she locked Purling, the old butler, into his pantry, and left him there for an hour, she told Daffy it would be so good for him to be obliged to sit still and rest, for he had told her how his legs ached going up and down stairs; and when Nurse had asked her how she could take pleasure in being so naughty, she retorted:
"If it rests Purling and pleases me, those are two good things, not naughty, that I've done!"