Chapter 10

Mrs. Bennett's cottage on the edge of Mersham Wood seemed to Robin when
she first saw it to be only a part of a fairy tale. It is true that only
in certain bits of England and in pictures in books of fairy tales did
one see cottages of its kind, and in them always lived with their
grandmothers--in the fairy stories as Robin remembered--girls who would
in good time be discovered by wandering youngest sons of fairy story
kings. The wood of great oaks and beeches spread behind and at each side
of it and seemed to have no end in any land on earth. It nestled against
its primæval looking background in a nook of its own. Under the broad
branches of the oaks and beeches tall ferns grew so thick that they
formed a forest of their own--a lower, lighter, lacy forest where
foxglove spires pierced here and there, and rabbits burrowed and sniffed
and nibbled, and pheasants hid nests and sometimes sprang up rocketting
startlingly. Birds were thick in the wood and trilled love songs, or
twittered and sang low in the hour before their bedtime, filling the
twilight with clear adorable sounds. The fairy-tale cottage was
whitewashed and its broad eaved roof was thatched. Hollyhocks stood in
haughty splendour against its walls and on either side its path. The
latticed windows were diamond-paned and their inside ledges filled with
flourishing fuchsias and trailing white campanula, and mignonette. The
same flowers grew thick in the crowded blooming garden. And there were
nests in the hawthorn hedge. And there was a small wicket gate.

When Robin caught sight of it she wondered--for a moment--if she were
going to cry. Only because it was part of the dream and could be nothing
else--unless one wakened.

On the tiny porch covered with honeysuckle in bloom, a little, old fairy
woman was sitting knitting a khaki sock very fast. She wore a clean
print gown and a white apron and a white cap with a frilled border. She
had a stick and a nutcracker face and a pair of large iron bowed
spectacles. She was so busy that she did not seem to hear Robin as she
walked up the path between the borders of pinks and snapdragons, but
when she was quite close to her she glanced up.

Robin thought she looked almost frightened when she saw her. She got up
and made an apologetic curtsey.

"Eh!" she ejaculated, "to think of me not hearing you. I do beg your
pardon, Miss, I do that. I was really waiting here to be ready for you."

"Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Bennett," Robin answered in a sweet hurry to
reassure her. "I hope you are very well." And she held out her hand.

Mrs. Bennett had only been shocked at her own apparent inattention to
duty. She was not really frightened and her nutcracker