ad in at
the gap. Then she gave a little gasp of surprise.

There on Norah's own particular seat--a mossy stone shaped very like a
stumpy armchair--sat the foreign little girl reading a book.

She raised her head and looked at Norah gravely.

[Illustration: She raised her head and looked at Norah gravely.]

They were a strange contrast--the pale, delicate-looking, little
dark-eyed foreigner, and fair-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked Norah.
For a few moments they looked at each other in silence, then the
foreign child spoke.

"You are the little girl I saw on the other side of the gate," she
said, speaking slowly and distinctly, as if she wanted to be quite sure
of saying the English words in the right way. "And all the other boys
and girls--are they also with you?"

"No," said Norah, "only Dan."

For the first time in her short life she felt shy and awkward. The
little girl spoke so precisely and had such dignified manners, "almost
like a grown-up princess," as Norah said afterwards when telling her
mother all about it; but if she had only known, the little girl was
really a great deal shyer than she was, and had never before spoken to
another little girl.

"And Dan--is he there?" she asked. "I don't think I do very much like
boys."

"Oh, you would like Dan," said Norah quickly. "Everyone likes Dan. He
_will_ be surprised when I tell him that you were sitting in our own
glen. We always call it 'our glen,' because nobody else knows about
it, and it looks quite the kind of place for fairies to come and play
in, doesn't it?"

"I don't think I know what you mean," said the little girl in a puzzled
kind of way. "What are fairies?"

CHAPTER IV.

FAIRIES.

"Don't know what fairies are? Oh, how funny!" said Norah. "You must
get Dan to tell you about them; he knows ever so much more about them
than I do. That is my seat you're sitting on now, and that is Dan's
seat over there," pointing to a mossy corner, and quite forgetting that
the glen belonged to the little foreign girl now, and that she and Dan
had no longer any right to it.

The little foreign girl rose to her feet quickly.

"Won't you come and sit here now?" she said. "Please do! And won't
Dan come and sit on his seat too?" glancing towards the corner Norah
had pointed out.

Norah felt that she had been rather rude, and hastened to make amends.

"No, I don't think we can come to-day," she said, "though thank you
very much for ask