"I'm trying to guess how old you are. And I thought you were a boy, too. I'm glad you're not."
"I'm 'most fourteen." Miss Jerry squared her shoulders proudly. "I guess I do look like a boy. I wear this sort of clothes most of the time, 'cept when I dress up or go to school. You see I've always gone with Little-Dad on Silverheels when he went to see sick people until I grew too heavy and—and Silverheels got too old." She said it with deep regret. "But I live—like this!"
"And do you wander alone all over the mountain?"
"Oh, no—just on this side of Kettle. Once a guide and a man from the Wayside disappeared there beyond Sleepy Hollow and that's why they call it Devil's Hole. Little-Dad made me promise never to go beyond the turn from Sunrise trail. I'd like to, too. But there are lots of jolly tramps this side. This"—waving her hand—"is the Witches' Glade and that"—nodding at the rock against which the man leaned—"is the Wishing-rock."
John Westley, who back home manufactured cement-mixers, suddenly felt that he had wakened into a world of make-believe.
He turned and looked at the rock—it was very much like a great many other rocks all over the mountainside and yet—there was something different!
Jerry giggled and clasped her very brown hands around her leather-clad knees.
"I name everything on this side—no one from Wayside ever comes this way, you see. I've played here since I was ever so little. I've always pretended that fairies lived in the mountains." She leveled serious eyes upon him. "They must! You know it's magic the way things—are—here!"
John Westley nodded. "I understand—you climb and you think you're on top and then there's lots higher up and you slide down and you think you're in the valley and you come out on a spot—like this—with all the world below you still."
"Mustn't it have been fun to make it all?" Jerry's eyes gleamed. "And such beautiful things grow everywhere and the colors are so different! And the woodsy glens and ravines—they're so mysterious. I've heard the trees talk! And the brooks—why, they can't be just nothing but brooks, they're so—so—alive!"