house put out all lights, hurry away. Aunt Katherine’s nieces are here and Aunt Katherine doesn’t want the house occupied.”

Kate was surprised but quickly pleased, too. Elsie had entered into a game whole-heartedly. Perhaps she was just an ordinary girl, after all! Perhaps she had been imagining absurd things about her. This Elsie calling out into the starry dimness, warning the little house of their approach, was Elsie as she should be, with her fairy-gold curls and elfin chin.

Kate involuntarily drew nearer to her. And then she raised her voice and called in her turn to the little orchard house. “But Aunt Katherine’s not here,” she called. “She is deep in a deep book. So light all your lights, if you wish, look out of your windows, open your doors. Little enchanted house, wake up!”

She was laughing as she finished and holding Elsie’s hand, for she was quite carried away by her own fancy. This was the kind of nonsense she loved, and the little house did seem alive and awake. She felt it responding there in its dim starlight!

Elsie allowed her hand to be held. But she cried, softly, but still in a carrying voice, “No, no, no. Don’t look out! Don’t wake up. There are two of us here. Two. Not one!”

And then the girls stood silent. The game had become so real that Kate would not have been at all astonished to see fairy lights at the windows, to hear windows opening and fairy laughter. But she heard nothing except the crickets in the uncut grass and Elsie’s hurried breathing.

“Come,” she whispered. “Let’s go all around the house”—and off she started, still holding Elsie’s hand. Elsie could only go, too. And at the back of the house, the side that was in view only of the orchard and vacant fields beyond, Kate noticed two windows wide open in the second story.

“Does Aunt Katherine let those windows stay open like that?” she asked, curiously. “Those are the windows in the study. I know from Mother’s telling. Suppose it should rain to-night? It must be an oversight. Let’s go back and get the key from Aunt Katherine now to-night and close them for her. Won’t it be fun to go in by starlight, just we two alone!”

Elsie shook her head violently and pulled her hand away at the same time. There was a break in her voice almost as though she were in danger of bursting into tears.

“You needn’t go being a busybody the very first hour you are here,” she exclaimed. “I 

 Prev. P 33/161 next