The Gap in the Fence | Page 7

we will come, unless it rains; and then, of course, you wouldn't be out either," said Norah. "Good-bye."
"Norah!" said Dan severely, as his sister pushed her way up through the bushes to the top of the bank, "you have been a very long time down in the glen, and I have called you lots and lots of times and you wouldn't answer. I think you must have heard!"
"Dan, dear, really I didn't hear," said Norah. "I was talking to the little foreign girl. Didn't you hear us? She was sitting in our glen, and her name is Una, and she is a very nice little girl; and she wants us to come and see her to-morrow, and I said we would if it was fine. Aren't you pleased, Dan?"
"Yes," said Dan, "very! I heard you talking to someone, and that is why I wanted to come down too. That's what made me cross, Norah; but I think the crossness has all gone away now, and I do want to hear about the little foreign girl, please," and Dan leant back comfortably in his chair as his sister began to wheel him over the mossy ground.
"Poor Dan!" said Norah; "it was horrid of me not to have heard you calling."
"I thought perhaps you were talking to a fairy," said Dan.
Norah laughed.
"I wish it had been a fairy," she said. "I would have wished for ever so many things. Oh dear, Dan, look at the sun! it's quite low, and mother will be wondering where we are."
"Here's Tom," said Dan. "Mother must have sent him to look for us."
Long before Tom reached them, however, he had begun to cry aloud his news.
"Mother's gone away! Aunt Edna's ill, and they sent a telegram for mother. Father's gone too, but he is coming back to-morrow."
"Oh, Tom!" said Norah.
And, "Oh, Tom!" echoed Dan blankly. It seemed so terrible to think of going home and finding no mother or father there.
"Who's going to look after us, and everything?" asked Dan.
"Kate is going to look after the house, and I'm to look after you--mother said so," said Tom importantly.
But the next morning Master Tom forgot his charge, and went off on some expedition of his own; and Norah and Dan were left on their own devices once more.
"I am glad father is coming back this evening," said Norah, as she pushed Dan's wheelchair through the wood on their way to see Una.
"So am I," said Dan; "but I do wish mother was coming too."
A low laugh sounded from somewhere close at hand, and Norah stopped wheeling the chair and looked about her.
"Norah, do you think it's fairies?" whispered Dan.
He had hardly said the words when a little girl sprang suddenly into the path in front of them. She was dressed in some soft, thick, white material, and had a long gauzy white shawl thrown over her head and shoulders.
"It's Una!" said Norah, and her little brother gave a sigh of disappointment. He had really almost thought that the little girl might be a fairy as she danced lightly on the path before them.
"I thought I would come and meet you to-day," said Una, "so I came through the--what do you call it?--the gap; and then when I heard you coming, I hid. I thought it might be someone I did not know, and Marie does not like me to be out alone."
"Is Marie your nurse?" asked Norah.
"Yes," said the little girl; "my very good nurse from the country of France."
"Are you a little French girl, then?" asked Dan.
Una looked at him gravely.
"No," she said. "I am cos--cos--it is such a very long word that I always forget it--cos-mo-pol-i-tan," she said slowly.
"Oh," said Norah, "that is a long word. And is that the name of the country where you come from?"
"I don't know," said Una. "Papa told me to tell anyone who asked me that I was cosmo--, you know, the long word again; and I think it means belonging to lots of different countries. Papa said it meant something like that when I asked him once; and we have lived in so many countries that I can't remember all the names."
"How nice to have lived in lots of different countries," said Dan. "When I'm a man I mean to be an explorer and go to every country in the world."
Norah looked a little unhappy. She always felt sad when Dan talked about all he meant to do when he was grown up, for she knew that he would never be strong enough to travel about the world as he wished.
"Why don't you be an author, Dan, and write books?" she said, "or a great painter, or a clergyman, like father?"
"I might be a clergyman," said Dan, "but if I was I should be a missionary, and go