“I wonder if real piskies come out in weather like this,” said Loveday, laughing at the white fringe of mist which outlined Aaron’s stubby head and blue cap, and her own curls and scarlet béret. “We look like Father Christmas.”
The damp made the pebbles on the garden path less noisy to walk over, so that they got up to the house more easily, but before they began their attack on the most neglected part, they decided that they must have one peep at their work of yesterday; so they crept into the kitchen-garden and down to the cleared bed. But, to their amazement and disgust, there was no cleared bed! They looked and looked, and stared at each other and back again, but there was no mistake. Some one or something had spread straw all over it again, and it was just as untidy as ever!
“That must be the wicked fairies!” cried Loveday indignantly. “The nasty, naughty, wicked things! They got here first, and this is what they have done, just to annoy us and Mr. Winter! It is too bad. I only hope he saw it yesterday as we left it for him. I think it’s dreadful of them to annoy a poor man like that, when he’s so sad. I don’t know how they can behave so!”
“Aw, it’s just like ’em,” said Aaron gravely. “They don’t care, they’m that bad.”
He was looking very solemn and rather nervous; he really did not like having to do with any place or thing that the wicked fairies had been near; for if they were vexed they did not care, as he said, what they did to the person who vexed them. He was for hurrying away to another part of the garden, and was actually starting, when, to his horror, he saw Loveday collecting the straw from the bed again.
“Don’t; you’d better not touch it!” he cried. “If the bad ones put it there, they’ll pay you out fine for meddling.”
“I don’t care,” said Loveday. “It’s poor Mr. Winter I’m thinking about, and I don’t care what they do. I am going to make his garden nice for him, poor man!”
And she went to work again in a way that showed that she meant it.
“Come along, Aaron,” she cried. “You needn’t leave me to do it all. Do help.”
Aaron was divided. He did not much like the idea of working by himself in another part of the garden, and he did not relish the task before him, but in the end he stood by Loveday very pluckily, and soon they had once more collected all the straw and raked up the bed as before.