Janet said nothing. In her own mind, although she didn’t like to speak of it, she believed Ally had gone up into the clouds round Blue Top to find Aunt Susan’s baby who, they understood, had been taken away by the Children of the Hill. Janet knew that Ally had carried a sore spot in her tender heart ever since that day last fall when Aunt Susan was up in the garret, and not knowing that the twins were there, had kissed the tiny shirt. Janet was a little older than the twins, and she was not quite sure that they had understood correctly what Aunt Rose had said one day after Aunt Susan had come home from a long walk, trying to hide that she had been crying—Aunt Rose had whispered that Aunt Susan had been up to the Children of the Hill. Yes, plainly, to Janet’s mind, Ally had taken it into her own hands to discover if they were right or wrong. For it was brave little Ally who, if there was anything to adventure about, always adventured. It was Ally to whom things were always happening. If there was a scrape round, Ally was always the one sure to get into it, although she usually contrived to come out on top—except on those two dreadful times of which you shall hear—for she had a courageous little spirit and a loving little heart. And it was this courageous spirit, and this loving heart full of childish sympathy for Aunt Susan, that had taken Ally away now all by herself. She loved everything so much that she had no thought of being harmed by anything.
So Janet reasoned.
And when, by and by, you learn where she had really gone, and what it was she brought home, perhaps you will think that the result of this particular adventure of Ally’s was one of the pleasantest things that ever befell the Children of the Valley.
II.
ALL THE PEOPLE.
The children had not always lived in this northern valley.
Janet and Jack and Essie and Ally had come from the far south—where no snow fell, and the only ice they ever saw was made by a machine—to the home of Old Uncle and Aunt Susan, who had lost all their own children. Uncle Billy and Aunt Rose had journeyed down to bring them, after their father and mother had gone into the country from which they never came back. Uncle Billy was a great comfort to them at that time; he was Old Uncle’s brother, and Aunt Rose was Old Uncle’s sister. Aunt Rose was young and pretty—at least as young and pretty as grown people can be, and wherever she was she made everything bright and happy.
It was a queer thing, that although Ally had great blue eyes, and fluffy yellow hair, and dimples all over her rosy face, and Essie had brown eyes, and dark smooth braids, and was a trifle the taller, people should always be taking them for each other, and often had to stop and think: “Oh, no, oh, no, the brown-haired one is the other one!”