"I hope so—I think so," said Magdalen. "But I don't think she ever went back quite the same way."
Hoodie stared harder. Maudie looked up with a puzzled face.
"Cousin Magdalen," she said, "I believe after all you've been taking us in. There is something in the story that means something else. How do you mean that Lena went back again to the brownies' country?"
"I mean," said Magdalen, "that it was the country of fancy-land—a country we may all go to, if——"
"If what, please?"
"If we keep good and kind and sweet and pretty feelings in our hearts," said Magdalen, slowly, and a little gravely. "But if we let ugly things in—crossness, idleness, and selfishness, and ugly creatures like that—the pretty fairies will never come near us to fetch us away to see their treasures. The brownies would not let untidy or ill-tempered children into their neat little nests of houses. And even if such children did get into fairy-land or fancy-land—whichever you like to call it, where there are such numberless beautiful and strange things—it would not be fairy-land to them, because their poor little eyes would be blind, and their poor little ears deaf."
"I think I understand," said Maudie, "and some day perhaps, Cousin Magdalen, you'll tell us some more about Lena."
"Perhaps," said Magdalen, smiling.
But Hoodie said nothing, only stared harder up in her cousin's face with her big blue eyes.
And Hec and Duke, who had been amusing themselves since the story was over and the talking had begun, by sticking daisies on to a thorn, trotted up to Cousin Magdalen to kiss her and say, "Zank zou for the pitty story."