Phil looked at his cousin in alarm.
“If you guess my secrets you won’t tell them?” he said.
“Of course I won’t tell. What do you take me for? Now you must not walk for a little, and the children are quite happy without us. Is not this a nice soft bank? I will sit by your side and you shall tell me what the lady said to you and you to her.”
“No,” said Phil, with sudden energy. “I cannot tell you what she said.”
“You cannot tell me?”
“No. I took the lady by surprise and she let out some of her secrets—not all, but some. It would not be fair to tell them to any one else. I asked her to walk with me, and she knew that you were watching. Now, Rachel, I am quite well again, as well as ever. Shall we go back to the other children?”
Rachel rose slowly to her feet.
“I hate secrets,” she said, “and the very air seems full of them sometimes. You have lots of secrets, and my aunts have secrets, and the lady of the forest has a secret, and there is a secret about my mother, for I know she is not dead and yet I never see her. These secrets are enough to starve my heart. Phil, how soon would a girl like me be supposed to be grown up?”
“Oh, Rachel, how can I tell?”
“I shall be thirteen in May and I am tall. When I am fifteen—that is, in two years’ time—I shall begin to go round the world looking for my mother. I don’t intend to wait any longer. When I am fifteen I shall begin to go.”