The children were not very fortunate in their nurse. Perhaps this helped to make them feel lonely and dull sometimes, when there scarcely seemed real reason for their being so. She was a good woman, and meant to be kind, and their mother trusted her completely. But she was getting old, and was rather tired of children. She had had such a lot to bring up—the four big brothers and sisters of Rafe and Alix, and before them a large family of their cousins. And I don’t think she was really very fond of children, though she was devoted to tiny babies. She didn’t in the least understand children’s fancifulnesses or many of their little ways, and was far too fond of saying, “Stuff and nonsense, Master Rafe,” or “Miss Alix,” as the case might be.
The walk this afternoon would not have been any livelier than usual, so far as nurse was concerned, but the children were so brimful of their new ideas that they felt quite bright and happy, and after a while even nurse was won over to enter into their talk, or at least to answer their questions pretty cheerfully.
For though of course they had not the least idea of telling her their secret, it was too much on their minds for them not to chatter round about it, so to say.
“Have you ever seen a fairy, nurse?” said Alix; and, rather to her surprise, nurse answered quite seriously:
“No, my dear. Time was, I suppose, as such things were to be seen, but that’s past and gone. People have to work too hard nowadays to give any thought to fairies or fairyland.”
But on the whole this reply was rather encouraging.
“You must have heard of fairies, though,” said Rafe. “Can’t you remember any stories about them?”
Nurse had never been great at story-telling.
“Oh dear no, Master Rafe,” she replied; “I never knew any except the regular old ones, that you’ve got far prettier in your books than I could tell them. Sayings I may have heard, just countryside talk, when I was a child. My old granny, who lived and died in the village here, would have it that, for those that cared to look for them, there were odd sights and sounds in the grounds of the old house down the lane. Beautiful singing her mother had heard there when she was a girl; and once when a cow strayed in there for a night, they said when she came out again she was twice the cow she had been before, and that no milk was ever as good as hers.”
The children looked at each other.