CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH THE HEROINE IS GIVEN A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION

During the remaining days of that gladsome rose-red June, Philomène went about the house with a face as glad as any sunbeam and as rosy as any flower. Nurse thought that the prospect of riding in a hay-cart and digging in the sand with a new spade sufficiently accounted for these radiant looks, but though the haystacks loomed large, they loomed only in the background—it was Godmother’s figure which occupied the foreground.

The plan cast only one shadow. Philomène felt very sorry at having to leave Master Mustardseed and Sweet William, and when the day for packing arrived, she had tears in her eyes as she opened the cage-door, and put in her hand so that the canary might perch upon her wrist. Unhappily Nurse was present, so Philomène could only kiss the canary’s green head tenderly, and whisper, “It isn’t for so very long, dear,” before she again closed the cage-door. As for Queen Mab, she put a soft padded paw into her mistress’s hand, and rubbed a soft whiskered face against her mistress’s arm, as who should say, “Goodbye, and don’t get too fond of any other pussycats.”

Then Philomène went into the garden and let herself into Sweet William’s house. He had been expecting her visit, and held out a lean little brown hand with what was for him an air of unusual condescension.

“Sit down,” he said, “you are a good child, and I shall miss you. But we shall meet again in September, I understand. By the way, I have decided to give you a letter of introduction to the fairy agent at the Cushats. The garden must have one, though I do not happen to know him. I don’t expect you will see very much of him, for you will not be as lonely there as here, and so much left to yourself. Considering that she isn’t a proper fairy godmother, yours seems to do very well by you. Still, it would be nicer for you to have the chance of getting to know another fairy if you could.”

All this while Sweet William had been rummaging in his cupboard. He now drew from it a white Japanese anemone, with its petals tightly shut up. This he handed to Philomène. “Is it the envelope?” she asked, wonderingly.

“No, child,” he replied, “it is the letter. I have written all that is necessary on the inside of the petals, and the anemone will open only when you have found the person for whom it is intended.” Philomène thanked him, and they took a friendly farewell of each other.

It was Lilian Augusta with whom she travelled to the little country station where Godmother was to meet her. She sat bolt-upright in her corner of the carriage, looking at the daisied fields as they sped by; she watched the miniature carts and horses as they toiled along the road below the level of the train, and her spirits were so high that nothing could chill or damp them, not even the drink concocted by Nurse for the journey, a horrible mixture of tea and milk with far too much sugar in it.

The little station of Wyndham-on-Ferry, at which the travellers presently arrived, was altogether too sleepy for this bustling age. The fiery red geraniums in the station-master’s garden nodded drowsily in the hot sun, the solitary porter seemed almost as drowsy as the geraniums, and the only wide-awake creature about the place was a cock that crowed from a neighbouring farmyard. Outside the station Godmother was waiting with the new trap and the white donkey, and Philomène had soon scrambled up on to the seat beside her.

“O Godmother,” she cried, “he really is a dear, with just the same big brown eyes as the donkey in the picture over the schoolroom mantelpiece, and the same long ears laid back.”

They had not driven far before the breath of the pinewoods met them, and that sound which is older than all the world beside, the primeval cadence of the league-long surf.

The gate of the Cushats stood open, white and friendly. The pigeons were cooing heart to heart in the woods, and the mingled sweets of heliotrope, rose, and jasmine, streamed out in wordless welcome. The lime-tree outside the bow-window of the drawing-room was casting a tremulous shadow on the lush-green turf of the lawn, and the pale gold of early evening was on the little old gabled house.

The furnishing of Philomène’s room was as innocently white and as hopefully green as any snowdrop; there was no carpet on the floor, only some green and white matting in places. A copy of one of Watts’ pictures, that of a knight standing lost in thought beside his white horse, was hanging where Philomène could see it as she lay in bed.

“The knight’s horse is very beautiful, Godmother,” she murmured just before dropping off to sleep, “but I think I like a white donkey even better.” Her hand was in Isolde’s, and the shoheen of the night wind in the pinewoods sounded in her ears as the sound of the sea.