“Get her to let you off your promise. I s’pose it’s Hannah or Delia.”
“Maybe I can do that,” and Dolly’s face looked a little brighter.
“Well, do; and don’t talk any more about it, till you can tell me all of it, whatever it is. Dolly, it isn’t anything wrong, is it?”
“No; I don’t see how it can be wrong.”
“Then let up on it, till you’re ready to talk square. I never had a secret from you.”
“I know it; and I’ll never have one from you again!”
So peace was restored, and Dolly said no more about fairies. But after she was tucked up in her own little white bed that night, she lay awake in the darkness for a long time, trying to puzzle it all out. One minute it would seem too absurd to think a little girl was a fairy; the next minute, it would seem just as absurd for a little girl to appear in the woods like that, and refuse to tell her name, and insist that their acquaintance be kept a secret! That was exactly what a fairy would do!
So, after reasoning round and round in a circle, Dolly fell asleep, and dreamed that she was a fairy herself, with a pink linen dress, and a pair of wings and a golden wand.
The next afternoon Jack Fuller was again at Dana Dene to play with Dick, and again Dolly trotted off to the woods. She found Pinkie sitting on a flat stone, waiting for her. The same pink linen frock, the same straw hat, with pink rosettes on it, and the same sweet-faced, curly-haired Pinkie. Dolly was so glad to see her, and fairy or mortal, she already loved her better than any little girl she had ever known.
But Pinkie was not so gay and merry as yesterday. She looked troubled, and Dolly’s sensitive little heart knew it at once.