“I've worked and worked and worked,” she said, with a drooping mouth, “and he doesn't come. And Miss Willard won't tell me why. I'm sure something has happened to him. Has there?”
“Why, no,” I said. “That is—er—certainly not!”
“There has!” She set her hands on my shoulders and explored my face with her sweet, anxious eyes. “Tell me. You must tell me! It was you who brought me here.” (Oh, the justice of womankind!) “Was it, indeed!”
“Well, it is your fault that—that I came. You encouraged me.” She let her hands drop and her eyes darkened with reproach. “Won't you tell me if he is ill?”
“He isn't ill. On honor.”
Despite her workaday garb, she was instantly metamorphosed into the brown-and-gold fairy again. “Then, when is he coming?”
“I don't know.”
“You do! But you won't tell. You're playing with me, you and Miss Willard.”
“Didn't you play with the Little Red Doctor? What about that clandestine message in the toe of the shoe?”
“Oh!” She had the grace to blush (and a brown-and-gold fairy's blush is something to cherish in memory). But at once curiosity overbore shame. “Did you give him the shoes yourself? What did he say when he put them on?” Recalling the impassioned monosyllable which signalized the Little Red Doctor's original discovery of the hairpin, I replied truthfully enough: “I don't think that would interest you.”