The Gap in the Fence | Page 8

and preach to black people. Oh, Una!" he said, breaking off suddenly, "do you know, twice now I have thought you were a fairy--once when you were talking to Norah yesterday, and again to-day. And do you know what I was going to ask you if you had been a fairy? To give me and Norah a carpet so that we could go wherever we liked. Mother read us a tale about a fairy carpet last winter."
Again the puzzled look which Norah had noticed the day before came into Una's face.
"I don't know what you do mean," she said. "What are fairies? Are they people, or just little children?"
"Why," said Dan, "fairies are dear little people who live in a lovely country called Fairyland, and nobody knows where that country is--only there are lots and lots of doors to fairyland if only we knew where to find them.
"Norah and I have looked for a fairy door everywhere," he went on, "but we have never found one yet. And we have never found a fairy either, though we know exactly what we should ask her for if we did see one; and fairies do come out of fairyland sometimes; it says so in nearly all the fairy-tale books. Let's all wish now!" he cried suddenly. "Out loud, you know, so that if there should be a fairy hiding somewhere around she'll hear what we are asking for, and perhaps give it us!"
"Oh, but Dan----," Norah was beginning, when Una sprang to her feet and made a queer sort of little dance in front of them.
"Fairies! fairies!" she cried, clapping her hands as though she were a little fairy queen herself, calling all her little people together. "I want father to be quite happy, please, and not to have to work so hard in that nasty dark study, and I want some little boys and girls to play with and do lessons with, just as if they were my very own brothers and sisters; and I want a puppy-dog for my very own, please, fairies, and----"
[Illustration: "'Fairies! fairies!' she cried, clapping her hands."]
"Oh, Una, Una! stop!" cried Norah. "You are spoiling all your wishes saying them out loud like that. Fairies never grant people's wishes if they call them out loud for everyone to hear."
But whether there were any fairies hiding in the wood that afternoon or not, at any rate one of little Una's wishes came true, as we shall see.
CHAPTER V.
HAPPY DAYS.
Nearly every day, after that first meeting, the children played with Una in the wood and joined her in the glen.
"The glen's nicer now it's Una's than when it was ours," said Dan one day, as he sat munching one of the nice little sugar cakes which Marie had made for them that morning.
"It wasn't ever ours really," said Norah.
"Well, anyway, it's Una's now, and it's much nicer," said Dan, looking gravely into the basket Una held out to him, and choosing a round, pink cake with a cherry in the middle.
Then one day something still nicer came to pass. The foreign gentleman came to call on Mr. Carew, to ask if he would allow his children to come every day and have lessons with his little girl.
The children were delighted when they heard of this. They had met the foreign gentleman in the lane as they were coming home from a walk with Rose, and they had wondered whether he had been to see their father.
"I hope he has not been to say we mustn't go and play with Una in the glen any more," Dan had said; but they had no idea what the foreign gentleman's visit had really been about until their father told them the next morning, after breakfast.
Mr. and Mrs. Carew had needed a little time in which to think about and talk over Monsieur Gen's proposal, and they did not want the children to know anything about it until all was settled.
For the last year--ever since Mary and Ruth had gone to school, and since Miss Rice, the governess who had been with them for over six years, had got married--the younger children had only had lessons when their mother or father could find time to teach them.
The school fees of the four elder children came to so large a sum of money that the vicar could not afford to have a governess at home for Norah and Tom and Dan; and as both Mr. and Mrs. Carew led very busy lives, lessons had sometimes to be put on one side altogether, and the children were beginning to forget a great deal which they had learned a year ago with Miss Rice.
The foreign gentleman's offer, therefore, had been a great relief to Mr. and Mrs. Carew, and the children were delighted at the