uriosity the child's avid curiosity for the supernatural alight
in her face. In the wood a breath of wind stirred the leaves; the
shadows and the fretted lights shifted and swung; all was vague
movement and change. Was it a bough that bent and sprang back or a
flicker of draperies, dim and green, shrouding a tenuous form that
passed like a smoke-wreath? She stared with wide eyes, and it seemed
to her that for an instant she saw the figure turn and the pallor of
a face, with a mist of hair about it, sway towards her. There was an
impression of eyes, large and tender, of an infinite grace and
fragility, of a coloring that merged into the greens and browns of
the wood; and as she drew her breath, it was all no more. The trees,
the lights and shades, the stir of branches were as before, but
something was gone from them.

"Joan!" she cried, hesitating.

"Yes," said Joan, without looking up. "What?"

The sound of words had broken a spell. Joyce was no longer sure that
she had seen anything.

"I thought, just now, I could see something," she said. "But I s'pose
I didn't."

"I did," remarked Joan.

Joyce crawled through the crisp ferns till she was close to Joan,
sitting solid and untroubled and busy upon the ground, with broken
stems and leaves all round her.

"Joan," she begged. "Be nice. You're trying to frighten me, aren't
you?"

"I'm not," protested Joan. "I did see a wood-lady. Wood-ladies
doesn't hurt you; wood-ladies are nice. You're a coward, Joyce."

"I can't help it," said Joyce, sighing. "But I won't go into the dark
spots of the wood any more."

"Coward," repeated Joan absently, but with a certain relish.

"You wouldn't like to go there by yourself!" cried Joyce. "If I
wasn't with you, you'd be a coward, too. You know you would."

She stopped, for Joan had swept her lap free of debris and was rising
to her feet. Joan, for all her plumpness and infantile softness, had
a certain deliberate dignity when she was put upon her mettle. She
eyed her sister with a calm and very galling superiority.

"I'm going there now," she answered; "all by mineself."

"Go, then!" retorted Joyce, angrily.

Without a further word Joan turned her back and began to plough her
way across the ferns towards the dark wood. Joyce, watching her, saw
her go at first with wrath, for she had been stung, and then with
compunction. The plump baby was so small in the brooding solemnity of
the pines, thrusting indefatigably along, bu