th greenery and flowers, to show that she was
queen of the feast.

'So it will be a "fete," after all, Helena,' said Sharley.

They were nearly as eager and pleased about it as I was myself, for
they had already learnt to love my grandmamma very dearly.

'There's only one thing,' we kept saying to each other every time we met
before the great day, 'it _mustn't_ rain. Oh, do let us _hope_ it will
be fine,--beautifully fine.'

CHAPTER V

A HAPPY DAY

And it _was_ a fine day! Things after all do not always go wrong in this
world, though some people are fond of talking as if they did.

That day, that happy birthday, stands out in my mind so clearly that I
think I must write a good deal about it, even though to most children
there would not seem anything very remarkable to tell. But to me it was
like a peep into fairyland. To begin with, it was the very first time in
my life that I had ever paid a visit of any kind except once or twice
when I had had tea in rather a dull fashion at the vicarage, where there
were no children and no one who understood much about them. Miss Linden,
the vicar's sister, a very old-maid sort of lady, though she meant to be
kind, had my tea put out in a corner of the room by myself, while she
and grandmamma had theirs in a regular drawing-room way. They had
muffins, I remember, and Miss Linden thought muffins not good for little
girls, and my bread-and-butter was cut thicker than I ever had it at the
cottage, and the slice of currant-bread was not nearly as good as
Kezia's home-made cake--even the plainest kind.

No, my remembrances of going out to tea at the vicarage were not very
enlivening.

How different the visit to Moor Court was!

It began--the pleasure of it at least to me--the first thing when I
awoke that morning, and saw without getting out of bed--for my room was
so little that I could not help seeing straight out of the window, and I
never had the blinds drawn down--that it was a perfectly lovely morning.
It was the sort of morning that gives almost certain promise of a
beautiful day.

In our country, because of the hills, you see, it isn't always easy to
tell beforehand what the weather is going to be, unless you really study
it. But even while I was quite a child I had learnt to know the signs of
it very well. I knew about the lights and shadows coming over the hills,
the gray look at a certain side, the way the sun set, and lots of things
of that kind which tol