was too curious now to be definitely unhappy. She wanted only to know the reason of Elsie’s behaviour. And she surprised herself more than a little by finding herself drawn to the sulky, ungracious, frightened girl. Nothing was at all the way she had dreamed it and expected it, it is true. But in some ways it was better. Elsie was more of a person than her dreams had made her, and friendship with her, if only they ever did become friends, might be quite wonderful. Kate did not think this out. It was just her feeling.

In the drawing-room Aunt Katherine sat down at her reading table and picked up her book. “It is after eight,” she told the girls, “and I’m sure Kate should go to bed early. But you may walk in the garden together a little first.”

Now Kate glimpsed the Aunt Katherine of tradition. Neither she nor Elsie had any thought but to obey the command. They went out together to walk in the garden. “Just like that,” Kate said to herself, inwardly smiling. But there was no rebellion in her thought. She distinctly liked Aunt Katherine and was ready to take commands from her. And this command was particularly welcome. Now Elsie must unbend! Now they must find each other.

For a minute they walked in silence and then Kate said, “Let’s go into the apple orchard. I want to see my mother’s house nearer. Do you know I can hardly wait until morning when I shall see it inside, too. Mother has told me so much about it!”

“It isn’t your mother’s house,” Elsie answered quite unexpectedly. “It’s Aunt Katherine’s. And there’s nothing to see in the dark. Just a little old gray house with weeds in the front walk. Even the road to it is all grown over with grass now, for no one goes there ever.”

“I want to see it all the same. It’s where my mother and my grandmother and my grandfather lived. I’m going whether you come or not.”

“Oh, all right,” Elsie acquiesced, sulkily. “But a lot you’ll see in the dark.”

It was just as Elsie had said. It was a little old gray house set down in the centre of the apple orchard with no road leading to it. And weeds stood high in the gravel front walk.

“Why, it’s a fairy house by starlight!” Kate exclaimed, quite forgetting Elsie’s mood in her own.

Elsie spoke in a rather high voice then, a voice that carried all through the orchard: “If it is a fairy house,” she called, “Fairies, beware! Orchard house, beware! If there are fairies in the 

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