“We won’t forget,” was the reply. “But it is time for you to be going. Lean back a little more.”
Mary did so, though wondering why, for she was quite getting into the way of obeying her little friends without hesitation.
And to her surprise she felt that the chair, which had seemed almost as if growing out of the ground, tilted back with her, though gently, as if on rockers. Then it swung forwards again, though gently still, and ended by very politely, so to say, though decidedly, turning her out. The surprise, it was all too gentle to make her start, confused her a little. Afterwards she felt almost sure that she must have shut her eyes for half a second, for the next thing she knew, she was standing quite steadily just on the forest-side of the small wicket-gate through which one entered into the garden of Dove’s Nest.
“Dear me, Cooies,” exclaimed Mary, “that was a short-cut. Now, you can never say you are not.”
But before she had time to add “fairies,” she found she was talking to the air, or at any rate not to the wood-pigeons, for they had disappeared.
Mary almost laughed, though she felt a tiny bit provoked too.
“They do treat me rather too babyishly,” she thought. “They might explain what they are going to do, a little more. But then, after all, in fairy stories they never do, and I am now quite sure that I am in a sort of fairy story—that is to say in all to do with the Cooies. If it was the night I should think I was dreaming; but it isn’t the night, and I am very glad of it. It is much nicer to have really to do with fairies.”
And she ran across the lawn in good spirits, not sorry to have missed the chilly walk through the wood.
“It couldn’t but have felt cold after that deliciously warm place,” she thought to herself. “Perhaps that is why they brought me home in that magic way. They wouldn’t like me to get a sore throat, or a sneezing cold, or any of these horrible things. Yes, I may be quite sure they are very, very kind fairies, whatever sort they are exactly.”
Pleasance was in the hall as Mary came in. She looked up brightly.