"No. She was to marry an old farmer. She went into the woods at dawn to wash in dew, and gather bindweed for her wreath——" She paused dramatically, her eyes dancing with fun; but Louise was wholly in earnest.
"Go on! Oh, go on!"
"She was never seen again."
"Oh, how lovely!" Louise shivered ecstatically. "I wish I'd been her. What did her foster people do?"
"What could they? I think they were glad to be rid of her." (Clare suppressed a certain tall young gipsy, who had figured suspiciously in the original narrative.) "Fairy blood is ill to live with, Louise. I don't envy Mrs. Blake, or Mrs. Thomas Rhymer."
"No. But it's so difficult to live in two worlds at once."
"Shouldering the wise man's burden already?"
"You get absent-minded, and forget—ink-stains, you know, and messages."
"I know," said Clare.
"You see, I have such a gorgeous world inside my head, Miss Hartill: I go there when I'm rather down, here. It's a sort of Garden of the Hesperides, and you are there, and Mother, and all my special friends."