It was Easter holidays—Easter was as late as it could be that year—and the weather was so beautiful that it really felt like summer. You would think the children should have been content; but they weren’t. They had no lessons at all to do, and a whole fortnight of nothing you really must do is, in my opinion, a mistake. During the long summer holidays Miss Brander, their governess, always left them something to do, just enough to give a nice fresh taste to the holidaying the rest of their time, and to prevent their feeling the reins quite loose on their necks like runaway ponies. And even without this, in the summer it was different, for they generally went to the seaside or to some hilly place for a month or so, to have a change of air, and away from home in a new place time seldom hangs much on children’s hands.
This Easter it was certainly doing so a good deal. There were other reasons too why the little couple felt rather at a loose end, rather tired of themselves. The big people were all unusually busy, for Ena was going to be married in June; and she and their mother or she and Jean were always going somewhere or other to order things, or to give their opinion about the doing up of the pretty old house, ten miles or so away, which was to be her new home. And though Ena was very kind when she had time, and the new brother-to-be held out grand promises of the visits they were to pay to their sister, and the fun they should have, still, all that seemed a good way off, and in the meantime Rafe and Alix felt rather out of it all. I am not sure but that they were just a little jealous of the new brother. “It’s only a pretence sort of brother,” said Alix one day when her feelings had been ruffled. I am afraid they felt as if he had some how put both their small noses out of joint.
So now you understand why Rafe and Alix were sitting rather disconsolately under the ilex, though the sun was shining brightly enough to melt away all clouds and mists inside as well as outside, any one would have thought.
In spite of Alix’s snub, Rafe looked up again in a minute or two.
“Why don’t you think of a better plan, then, if you don’t like mine?” he said. “It’s always easy to say things won’t do,” (which is exceedingly true!), “but why don’t you find something that will do?”
Alix turned round. She was sitting on the end of the rustic bench, swinging her legs, which was not difficult, as they scarcely reached the ground, and staring up at the thickly-growing branches overhead. But now she looked at Rafe—he felt a little nervous; was she going to take offence at his speech?
No—she had heard what he said, but she was not vexed.
“I know what I wish we could find,” she said. “Do you remember, Rafe, the story of a white lady, up, up in a room at the very top of a castle somewhere, who was always spinning stories? They came out of the hum of her spinning-wheel somehow, and the children could hear them when they sat down on the floor beside her. Oh, if we could find somebody like that!”
“It was fairies,” said Rafe doubtfully. “At least the white lady was a fairy, and there aren’t any really, I suppose.”
“Everybody says so,” Alix replied doubtfully, “but I don’t quite see why there mightn’t be. If there have never been any, what began all the fairy stories? And I know one thing—papa said so himself one day when he was telling some—what’s the word?—it means a sort of a fairy story that’s been told over and over since ever, ever so long ago, ledge—what is it?”