For a minute they walked in silence and then Kate said, “Let’s go into the apple orchard. I want to see my mother’s house nearer. Do you know I can hardly wait until morning when I shall see it inside, too. Mother has told me so much about it!”
“It isn’t your mother’s house,” Elsie answered quite unexpectedly. “It’s Aunt Katherine’s. And there’s nothing to see in the dark. Just a little old gray house with weeds in the front walk. Even the road to it is all grown over with grass now, for no one goes there ever.”
“I want to see it all the same. It’s where my mother and my grandmother and my grandfather lived. I’m going whether you come or not.”
“Oh, all right,” Elsie acquiesced, sulkily. “But a lot you’ll see in the dark.”
It was just as Elsie had said. It was a little old gray house set down in the centre of the apple orchard with no road leading to it. And weeds stood high in the gravel front walk.
“Why, it’s a fairy house by starlight!” Kate exclaimed, quite forgetting Elsie’s mood in her own.
Elsie spoke in a rather high voice then, a voice that carried all through the orchard: “If it is a fairy house,” she called, “Fairies, beware! Orchard house, beware! If there are fairies in the house put out all lights, hurry away. Aunt Katherine’s nieces are here and Aunt Katherine doesn’t want the house occupied.”
Kate was surprised but quickly pleased, too. Elsie had entered into a game whole-heartedly. Perhaps she was just an ordinary girl, after all! Perhaps she had been imagining absurd things about her. This Elsie calling out into the starry dimness, warning the little house of their approach, was Elsie as she should be, with her fairy-gold curls and elfin chin.
Kate involuntarily drew nearer to her. And then she raised her voice and called in her turn to the little orchard house. “But Aunt Katherine’s not here,” she called. “She is deep in a deep book. So light all your lights, if you wish, look out of your windows, open your doors. Little enchanted house, wake up!”
She was laughing as she finished and holding Elsie’s hand, for she was quite carried away by her own fancy. This was the kind of nonsense she loved, and the little house did seem alive and awake. She felt it responding there in its dim starlight!