Halfway down the hill pasture stood a little beach wood. They took their way through that because it looked so cool and inviting, and because Katherine knew there was a spring there among some rocks where they could get long, satisfying drinks of cold water. It was there they saw the fairy. They saw her just as they came out of the bright sunlight into the green, cool shade of the wood and stood above the water. She was at the other side of the spring facing them. She was looking down at her reflection in the water, not at all aware of their approach.
Kate saw her as a lovely girl in a floating green garment. Her feet and arms were bare and shining and it was their shining that made Kate know, even in that first instant before the fairy had glanced up, that she was unearthly. Kate and Katherine stood as still as the leaves on the trees in that still wood, awed and entranced. Then the little Kate whispered “Mother!” and pointed. At that whisper the fairy lifted her eyes. Kate saw the surprise in her eyes and a dawning—something; was it friendliness, or a smile? There was not time to know; for the fairy flashed backward and up on to a stone behind her across which the sunlight fell. And there she was lost in the sunlight. They simply could not see her any more.
But Kate had never forgotten that instant when they stood looking at the fairy while she was plain to view. And she had never forgotten the expression on her mother’s face after the fairy had vanished. It was such a delighted expression, so startlingly satisfied.
But that night, in talking it over, it came out that mother and daughter had not seen exactly the same thing. Katherine was sure that the being who had stood looking down at the spring was taller than human, grander, with a more tranquil, noble face, And her garment, she said, was the colour of sunlight, not green at all. Little Kate protested that. No, she was just a slim girl and her garment was green. Why, Kate remembered exactly how it hung almost to her bare ankles, without fluttering or motion in that still wood. The golden gown Katherine had seen had blown back, she said, as in a strong wind, although she herself felt no breath of air.
The end of their discussion came to this. Katherine said it might be that the sun in the high meadow together with their having had no luncheon had made them see not quite true. When they came suddenly into the cool, green shaded wood out of the glare their eyes played them tricks. What seemed like a person standing above the spring may have been simply an effect of sunlight striking through leaves.
“You remember, don’t you,” Katherine had ended, “how she vanished into sunlight when you said ‘Mother’? Well——”
And Katherine had left it at that. “Well——” But she had warned little Kate not to talk about it.
“People will think I had no business letting you go without luncheon so,” she gave as her reason, laughingly.
But just because she had promised Katherine that she would not talk about having seen a fairy, Kate had thought about it all the more. And she never went into a cool wood out of hot sunlight without hoping to surprise a fairy again. What she had seen she had seen, and that was all there was to it!
So now to Kate the thought that fairies might somehow be connected with the little orchard house did not seem at all an impossibility. Elsie certainly had not acted or looked as though she were lying. And it was perfectly true that from the minute Kate herself had first caught sight of the orchard house she had felt that there was something very special about it—more special than just the fact that it was the house where her mother had been born and grown up and married. When Elsie called out “Fairies, beware! Orchard House, beware!” Kate had been pricked with the feeling of listening ears. She had felt somehow that the warning was truly heard and taken.