She raised her head and looked at Norah gravely.
She raised her head and looked at Norah gravely.
They were a strange contrast—the pale, delicate-looking, little dark-eyed foreigner, and fair-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked Norah. For a few moments they looked at each other in silence, then the foreign child spoke.
"You are the little girl I saw on the other side of the gate," she said, speaking slowly and distinctly, as if she wanted to be quite sure of saying the English words in the right way. "And all the other boys and girls—are they also with you?"
"No," said Norah, "only Dan."
For the first time in her short life she felt shy and awkward. The little girl spoke so precisely and had such dignified manners, "almost like a grown-up princess," as Norah said afterwards when telling her mother all about it; but if she had only known, the little girl was really a great deal shyer than she was, and had never before spoken to another little girl.
"And Dan—is he there?" she asked. "I don't think I do very much like boys."
"Oh, you would like Dan," said Norah quickly. "Everyone likes Dan. He will be surprised when I tell him that you were sitting in our own glen. We always call it 'our glen,' because nobody else knows about it, and it looks quite the kind of place for fairies to come and play in, doesn't it?"