Chapter 17

The Little House

Everybody has heard of the Little House in the Kensington
Gardens, which is the only house in the whole world that the
fairies have built for humans. But no one has really seen it,
except just three or four, and they have not only seen it but
slept in it, and unless you sleep in it you never see it. This
is because it is not there when you lie down, but it is there
when you wake up and step outside.

In a kind of way everyone may see it, but what you see is not
really it, but only the light in the windows. You see the light
after Lock-out Time. David, for instance, saw it quite
distinctly far away among the trees as we were going home from
the pantomime, and Oliver Bailey saw it the night he stayed so
late at the Temple, which is the name of his father's office.
Angela Clare, who loves to have a tooth extracted because then
she is treated to tea in a shop, saw more than one light, she saw
hundreds of them all together, and this must have been the
fairies building the house, for they build it every night and
always in a different part of the Gardens. She thought one of
the lights was bigger than the others, though she was not quite
sure, for they jumped about so, and it might have been another
one that was bigger. But if it was the same one, it was Peter
Pan's light. Heaps of children have seen the light, so that is
nothing. But Maimie Mannering was the famous one for whom the
house was first built.

Maimie was always rather a strange girl, and it was at night that
she was strange. She was four years of age, and in the daytime
she was the ordinary kind. She was pleased when her brother
Tony, who was a magnificent fellow of six, took notice of her,
and she looked up to him in the right way, and tried in vain to
imitate him and was flattered rather than annoyed when he shoved
her about. Also, when she was batting she would pause though the
ball was in the air to point out to you that she was wearing new
shoes. She was quite the ordinary kind in the daytime.

But as the shades of night fell, Tony, the swaggerer, lost his
contempt for Maimie and eyed her fearfully, and no wonder, for
with dark there came into her face a look that I can describe
only as a leary look. It was also a serene look that contrasted
grandly with Tony's uneasy glances. Then he would make her
presents of his favourite toys (which he always took away from
her next morning) and she accepted them with a disturbing smile.
The reason he was now become so wheedling and she so mysterious
was (in brief) that they knew they were about to be sent to bed.
It was then that Maimie was terrible. Tony entreated her not to
do it to-night, and the mother and their coloured nurse
threatened her,