“Just as though,” burst in Betty, “it was a kind of ‘Piper of Dreams’ sound. Gerry, there’s a picture in the post-office at home—framed, you know, and to sell. There’s a boy there, sitting under a tree—a kind of fairy boy, I think—playing a pipe. And rabbits and birds are round his knees listening to him, and not minding him. I’ve often taken the twins to see it”—Betty gave a little gulp of remembrance—“and some day when I’m rich I shall buy it for them. But even then I shan’t like it any better than I do now, I don’t think. Perhaps not so much. It’s nice not to have a thing for altogether, but to have to go out and look at it.”
Gerry nodded again. “But,” she objected, “this music couldn’t be him—I mean we couldn’t have fairy-piper music here, unless—” Transfixed with a sudden idea she gave a little cry. “If it came from Witch’s Wood now,” said Gerry. “That’s supposed to be magic. But of course it didn’t; and no witch would ever play fairy music of course.”
“‘Witch’s Wood!’” repeated Betty, staring.
“You can ask Rene about it. Her father is the doctor here. She’s only a boarder at Benedick’s because she wants to be so much. She knows about Witch’s Wood; it was she who told Mona and me.” Gerry turned from the fence and seized a trowel. “Let’s go on gardening, Betty, and get the ground ready for the mignonette seeds, like Sybil said. We’ll listen while we do it. It’s funny that I’ve been to school a year longer than you and never heard it before till to-day. And you’ve heard it often.”
“I think I have,” corrected Betty. “Always when I’ve been alone, I think; or else I would have been sure to have asked if you and the others were hearing it too. To-day, though, you came along just as I was beginning to wonder about it. Perhaps if we don’t talk it will come back.”
Gardening went on, however, after that without the interruption that they hoped for. Every now and then the girls lifted their heads, but no sound came from the wood on the other side of the fence save the faint soughing of the breeze in the branches and the occasional call of a bird.
“Doesn’t anybody ever go in there, Gerry?” inquired Betty, rather inclined to look upon the wood as the home of Faery.
“Anybody? Why, of course; we often do. The senior girls built their huts in there for the Pioneer badge last summer, and they gave the whole school tea. And we fetch primrose plants for the gardens from the wood—from where the wood doesn’t miss them, you know. We often go in there, too, on hot days. But it’s private except to us. No one else goes there.” Gerry threw back her mop of hair. “We might get some foxglove plants for the garden from there later on. They’d be lovely.”
“Wouldn’t they!” agreed Betty.
But she spoke half-abstractedly. Her heart was filled with another idea. The sound of the music and the remembrance of the dream picture in the little post-office at home had set her own dreams racing. Gerry had mentioned Witch’s Wood; and the name had a splendid mystery about it too. At the very next chance she would ask Rene to tell her about it.