“Can’t we go too, please, please?”
“Not this time, dears. We’ll be rather late getting back, and I want you to get to bed good and early. But soon we’ll fix up a picnic, when the weather grows more settled. I think we are going to have a very early spring this year ... why, it’s more like the end of April than the end of March right now.”
After they had waved their parents out of sight, the two girls turned back into the house a trifle forlornly.
“Dear me, I wish we were big enough to do just what we wanted to do,” grumbled Rose. “Grown-up people don’t consider enough how we young ones suffer when they don’t let us do things.”
They went glumly into the living room and sat down, trying to think of something to do. But the thought of the ponies loping out there in the moonlight with Dad and Marmie drove other ideas away.
Suddenly Ruth looked up eagerly.
“Oh, Rose, I do wish the fairy would come,” she exclaimed. “Then we wouldn’t mind being left behind.”
“That’s true. Suppose we wish for her.”
“A wish is as good as a smile,” remarked the voice of Honeysqueak. “I’ve been sitting right here some time, but such a pair of scowling faces frightened all the words away—I couldn’t get hold of one.”
“We weren’t cross, dear fairy,” explained Rose, “just sort of despairing.”