“Very well,” said Ruby. “Not that I care much how the baby is, but there’s rather a nice scrambly way home up behind Joan’s house. I found it one day when you had a cold and weren’t with me. It brings you out down by the stile into the little fir-wood—just where you’d never expect to find yourself. And oh, Mavis, there’s such a queer little cottage farther along the shore, at least just above the shore that way. I saw it from the back, along the scrambly path.”
“I wonder whose it is,” said Mavis. “I don’t remember any cottage that way. Oh yes, I think I remember passing it one day long ago when Joan was our nurse, and she made me run on quick, but she didn’t say why.”
“Perhaps it’s haunted, or some nonsense like that,” said Ruby with her contemptuous air. “I’ll ask Joan to-day. And if we pass it I’ll walk just as slow as ever I can on purpose. You’ll see, Mavis.”
“We’d better run now,” said Mavis. “The sands are pretty firm just here, and cousin Hortensia said we were to make ourselves warm. Let’s have a race.”
They had left the cove and were making their way to the hamlet by the foot of the rocks, where at low tide there was a narrow strip of pebbly sand, only here and there broken by out-jutting crags which the children found it very amusing to clamber over. Their voices sounded clear and high in the air. For the wind seemed to have fallen with the receding tide. By the time they reached the cottages they were both in a glow, and Ruby had quite forgotten her indignation at old Bertha’s fireless rooms.
Chapter Two.
Winfried.
“And somewhat southward toward the noon,
Whence lies a way up to the moon;
And thence the fairy can as soon
Pass to the earth below it.”
Drayton.