Chapter Eight.
“A Little White Gate.”
Mary stood still for a moment or two, gazing after them, or rather gazing at the place where they had been. She felt, as she would have said herself, “rather funny”; not frightened exactly, and certainly very curious to see what was going to happen next, but just a little timid about making the plunge into the dark mysterious depths of the forest.
But it was now or never.
“If I let myself get silly and run back home, or anything like that,” she thought, “I daresay the Cooies will never care for me again, or come to see me or show me things. For I can see they are rather obstinate, and of course if they are fairies, or partly fairies, they like to be obeyed—fairies always do. And godmother too—I believe she understands about fairies much more than she says—and she always is sure no harm can come to me in the forest. So I’d better be quick and look out carefully for the little grey feather.”
She walked on therefore, not too fast, for fear of passing the signal, and with her eyes fixed on the bushes on the left. But it seemed to her that she had walked a good long way, farther than she expected, before she felt satisfied that she had got to the place where Miss Verity and she had stood the day before.
“Can I have passed it?” she asked herself, “and can I possibly have missed the feather, or can it have blown away?” and she stopped short, feeling a little anxious.
But just then a very faint “coo” reached her ears; it was scarcely to be heard, more like the shadow of the sound, but still it was plainly in front of her, and it encouraged Mary. She had not come too far, and stepping on again, she soon recognised the spot, and—a little bit on again, and she gave a tiny cry—there, safely nestling among the branches, within reach of her hand—was the wee grey, or rather “dove-coloured” feather.
“I might have known it would be all right—and of course anything fairy-ish couldn’t blow away,” she thought.