"Don't you know? Look at me well—you have often done so, though you never saw me so plainly before."
It was the same voice, and though sweet and gentle it had to be obeyed. So Merran looked at her, and gradually she began to understand, though vaguely.
"Yes," she said, "I seem to know your face, and your dress, and—and—but yet you can't be the figure in the rain-house. You are so pretty, so very pretty, and even your dress—oh what lovely stuff it's made of."
And so it was. The "doll-woman," as Merran had called her, was attired in a short, queerly spotted red skirt, with a white jacket—only painted wood, of course, to mortal eyes—and a kind of kerchief on her head. Now the skirt had changed into fine, rose-coloured silky stuff, beautifully embroidered all over with tiny daisies; the hard stiff upper dress was of snowy, delicate muslin, such as Merran had never before seen or dreamt of; the head-gear a gauzy scarf of golden tissue; the little feet were shod with slippers of the same lovely red as the skirt, gleaming against the whitest and finest of stockings.
"Oh," exclaimed Merran again, "how pretty, oh how very pretty you are; your dress too! I can't believe you're the doll-woman. I didn't think her at all pretty, and yet——" she felt too puzzled to explain, and no wonder, for the face still smiling at her was so very charming. Blue eyes like forget-me-nots; cheeks like delicate blush roses; lovely bright brown hair, some ends of which came straying out of the graceful head-dress, and above all such a sweet and kindly expression!
"Yet," said the fairy lady, for that this she was the little girl began to feel sure, "yet, Merran, your idea is right. I am the same, and this place where you are standing is what you have called the 'rain-house.' Look about you—this is only the entrance—and then I will take you inside and you shall see my husband, who will welcome you as I do. We have expected you for a long time, but till you spoke to me in your trouble I had no power to bid you come."
Then Merran turned and gazed around her, and strange as it had seemed at first, she began to recognise the roughened walls, the branches wreathed round the porch with its two open doorways, even the flooring on which she stood, painted to look like tiles.
"Yes," she exclaimed, "it is like the rain-house, as much as I could see of it. But—" and then for the first time a new perplexity struck her, "if it really is it," she asked, "how can I be in it? How can I be littler even than you? Why I could have held you in my hand when I was down in the garret, if I could have got you? Have you grown big, or have I grown tiny?"
The Sunshine fairy—we can call her by her name now—laughed, and oh how pretty her laugh was!
"My dear Merran," she said, "it doesn't matter. Perhaps, however, it is less confusing for you to think you have grown tiny. But I needn't puzzle you if you understand that to all intents and purposes you are in fairyland—as much there as it is well for a mortal child to be. Your old rain-house is one of its entrances. Come now, and you shall see more."