“Legends, you mean,” said her brother. “Yes, I remember papa telling us some very queer ones he had heard in India.”
“And he said there were fairy stories in every country,” Alix went on. “So what I say is there must have been something to make them begin!”
This sounded very convincing to Rafe—Alix certainly had clever ways of putting things.
“Oh!” he said, with a deep sigh. “If we could but find some one old enough to remember the beginnings of them—something like the white lady, you know.”
Both children sat silent for a moment or two, their eyes gazing before them. Suddenly on the short green turf appeared a tiny figure, a wren, so tame that she hopped fearlessly to within a very short distance of the little brother and sister, and then, standing still, seemed to look up at them with her bright eyes, her small head cocked knowingly on one side.
“Rafe,” exclaimed Alix eagerly, though in a low voice.
“Alix,” said Rafe in his turn.
Then they looked at each other, thinking the same thoughts.
“Rafe,” whispered Alix, while the wren still stood there looking at them, “just look at her; she’s not a bird, she’s a fairy—or at least if she’s not a fairy she’s got some message for us from one.”
The wren hopped on a few steps, still looking back at them. The children slipped off the seat and moved softly after her without speaking. On she went, hopping, then fluttering just a little way above the ground, then hopping again, till in this way she had led them right across the wide stretch of lawn to some shrubberies at the far side. Here a small footpath, scarcely visible till you were close to it, led through the bushes to a strip of half-wild garden ground, used as a sort of nursery for young trees, which skirted a lane known by the name of the “Ladywood Path.” And indeed it was little more than a path nowadays, for few passed that way, though the story went that in the old days it had been a good road leading to a house that was no longer in existence.