Chapter IV: Part 4

The Professor was working at his microscope when his secretary, Miss Tuckey, came in with the letters, last night’s and this morning’s. He had been seeing wonderful things in it; but when he looked up he saw nothing distinctly, for his eyes were feeble, and a large glass case of stuffed birds standing in the window appeared only as a haze of colour until he put on one of his two pairs of spectacles, those which he used for looking at things from a distance. Then he saw that Miss Tuckey had a smut on her nose, and told her so; for he very much liked being on the spot himself and correcting others, and did not mind being rude about it.

Miss Tuckey wiped the smut off her nose, and giving him his letters waited to receive instructions. For that he had to put on his reading-glasses; and once more Miss Tuckey became a blur, and could have had as many smuts as she liked on her nose without his seeing one of them. This changing of glasses always took up a great deal of his day; but to-day it was going to matter rather more than usual, which is why I mention it.

Having, in about half an hour, disposed of all his business letters, he came at last to Elfrida’s. It was in a pink envelope, and it had a scent of violets; and as he opened it and unfolded the letter, a green leaf dropped out—just an ordinary green leaf from a tree. He took it up and examined it, and knew it at once. “What is she sending me this botanical specimen for, I wonder?” he said. “A leaf of the hornbeam, _Carpinus betulus_, if I am not mistaken.”

Then he looked at the letter, but Elfrida’s handwriting, which at the best of times was bad, when she was excited became almost unreadable—by him, at any rate.

Handing it over to Miss Tuckey, he told her to read it to him, and this is what she read:

“DEAREST GRANDPAPA,

“I am coming back to-morrow. I have had a lovely time. So did Benjy;
we went everywhere together, but he always would go into the water,
and I had to stay out.

[“Benjy is the dog, I believe,” explained the Professor.]

“That was wrong of him, wasn’t it? To-day in the wood I saw a tree
full of fairies; it was wonderful. Benjy was barking at them, and they
didn’t mind. But when I came they all climbed up and hid behind the
leaves; and I waited till one came out again—quite close I was then.
If I’d had a butterfly net I could have caught him easily. And I send
you a leaf off the tree, so as to show you it was a real one, and not
what you call my ‘imagination.’

[The Professor made a dry noise; it couldn’t be called a laugh. “Oh!” said he, “so that’s what the botanical specimen is for.... Yes?” Miss Tuckey went on reading.]

“Please keep it till I come, then I will tell you all about it.”

“I saw a tree full of fairies.”
]

The Professor gave an uncomfortable wriggle, and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Miss Tuckey,” he said, “I wish you would not leave that door open! There’s a dreadful draught at my back.”

“It isn’t open, sir,” replied Miss Tuckey.

“Well, there’s a draught somewhere—quite a wind! It seemed to come all of a sudden. And there! it has blown Miss Elfrida’s leaf away, that was here only a moment ago. Put the screen round me; then perhaps I shan’t feel it.”

Miss Tuckey went and arranged the screen, and while she did so he drew out his writing materials and began to settle to his morning’s work. “Is that all the letter?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, except she sends her love.”

Then for a moment he remembered the leaf, and looked to see where it had fallen. But it was nowhere in sight, and being of no importance, in another moment he had forgotten it.

Miss Tuckey made final arrangements for his comfort: she put his papers in order and within reach, then made up the fire, and because the sun was shining drew down the green venetian blinds, so that the room remained in pleasant gloom. Then she put the electric reading-lamp and the telephone by his side, and having switched on the light, which he preferred, left him to his work.

This so absorbed him that he was entirely unaware of being looked at. Some people feel it instinctively, others don’t. But perhaps it needs to be the eye of a human being. We should not, perhaps, know that a cow was looking at us; and if a flea looked at us, still less; a queen very likely would not know that she was being looked at by a cat.

But this wasn’t a cat, or a cow, or a flea; it was something quite different. Those who have seen anything like it before will, perhaps, recognize it from my description: and how could I describe it if I had not seen it myself?

If we sat where the Professor was sitting, this is how it would appear to us: first, over the far end of the writing-table, a pair of strange eyes rather prominent, polished, shining. Dark and bird-like they stared at him out of a small green face, that looked funny but wasn’t human. Out of the head sprouted two long horns that curved and waved like feelers, this way and that, and the rest was all of a piece. The creature was a curious mixture of beetle, bird, and grasshopper; it had a cover, but it did not wear clothes; its colour from head to foot was bright green.

With great interest and curiosity it stood looking at the Professor, but apparently without understanding; and presently, as if to get a nearer view of him, it moved slowly round the writing-table till it stood opposite to him.

The Professor, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, paid no attention. The only noise in the room was the soft scratching of a quill pen.

Presently the creature smacked its lips, and began making a soft jabber to itself, not much louder than the whip of leaves on a window-pane. If you have heard a starling nibbling its beak on a fine spring day—that is the sort of sound the creature made.

The Professor, thinking that he heard something he ought not to hear, looked up through his reading-glasses, and could not believe his eyes.

This, of course, must be the fault of the glasses, for it was quite impossible that he should see in front of him a small green figure with eyes in its head, which appeared to be resting claw-like fingers upon his writing-table, while dancing up and down upon its toes, and looking altogether rather pleased with itself and rather puzzled at him.

So in great haste the Professor changed his glasses, and looked again. To his horror and consternation the creature was still there.

The Professor at once took up the scientific attitude. Though it was a great shock to him for his eyes to be seeing something which could not be there, it was still capable of explanation.

“Dear me, now!” he said to himself. “This is most extraordinary. Let me think! How many cups of green tea did I have this morning?”

And hardly had he put the question than the creature spoke—made a noise, that is to say:

“Sik-sik-sik-sik-sik-sik-sik!”

It sounded like a blackbird flying away through the trees.

“Six, I believe it was,” said the Professor; then he started. “Did that thing speak?”

And immediately, if speaking it can be called, the thing spoke again, and having begun, went on, paying very little attention to him:

“Chwee-e-weet! Chick-a-wee! Chick-a-wee! Chip-chip-chip-chick-a-wee!”

This persistence of the hallucination made the Professor realize that the situation was serious. “I must be ill!” he said to himself, made a dive for the telephone, and rang up without pause, till the exchange heard him.

“Station 1228, please—yes, 1, double 2, 8!”

And as he said it, that creature, that figment of his imagination, took up and repeated the sound.

“Two-eight! two-eight! Eight-eight-eight-eight-eight!”

* * * * *

This was not like a blackbird, it was like a nightingale. The Professor was getting more and more frightened; to be in such a state of health was terrible. Then, to his relief, a voice came down the telephone.

“Is Doctor Locum——?” he began. “Oh, is that you, Doctor? Will you come and see me at once?... Braintree, Professor Braintree. Yes—most urgent. I’m afraid I’ve—broken down.”

The Doctor had not quite caught him. “No, no, not a blood-vessel—worse! Do come at once! Don’t lose a moment.... What?”

But the Doctor had already gone, presumably was upon his way.

“What? what? what? what? what?”

It was that thing talking again! The Professor fixed it with a stare which tried to be sensible. He knew that it did not exist. Why, then, must he go on seeing it, hearing it? He made a great effort of will: shut it out of his sight, diverted his attention, went back to his writing. He dipped his pen.

The horrible little creature watched him, imitated him, leaned over, dipped its finger in the inkpot, and flipped the ink over his paper.

In his terror, to avoid thinking himself mad, the Professor was magnanimous. “There! I did that!” he said.

He looked across; the creature had disappeared. Willpower was having its effect.

But scarcely had he begun to congratulate himself on that fact, when over his shoulder came the horned head.

He started away from it in irrepressible disgust. “Get out!” he cried.

The creature made a dive, and disappeared again. Once more he began to feel relief, when suddenly from a corner of the room he heard it tapping at the typewriter, and as it tapped it imitated the sound. It sounded almost, but not quite, like: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppercorns.” But it couldn’t be actually those words: _words_, no! If he began actually hearing it say words—sentences with a meaning—the state of his mind would be worse than ever.

The Professor picked up his penwiper and threw it; and sportively, as though it were playing a game with him, the green imp ducked and disappeared.

A moment later it had hold of him by the toe. The Professor gave a despairing howl, and sprang up into his chair. Another of his senses was gone; not only did he see and hear this thing which did not exist—he had felt it as well. “If this goes on much longer,” he said to himself, “I shall go stark, staring mad.”

But even as he spoke the imp’s active and ever-shifting interest had gone elsewhere. Twisting and pirouetting across the room, it came suddenly on the case of stuffed birds standing in the window, and stopped, transfixed with astonishment.

Net in hand, the Professor advanced.
]

Then it tapped upon the glass case, and after a close scrutiny began trying, with bird-like sounds and a flapping motion of the hands, to coax the occupants back to life.

The Professor stood and listened spellbound; this was getting worse and worse, for now the creature was showing sympathy; it was saying things that meant something.

“Chick-a-wake! Weet-weet! Oh, why? Tickle ’em up! Two-to-eat! Two-to-eat! Eat-eat-eat! Quick, quick! Josaphat! Josaphat! Drink-and-eat! Wake-up!”

This advance of the green imp in the direction of speech had upon the Professor only the effect of making his own mind descend into the depth. The more sane, the more understanding this creature of his imagination appeared to be, the more obviously was he himself the victim of a delusion. He knew, he knew for certain, that such a thing could not really exist. And yet by the evidence of all his senses it did.

And then, all at once, he got a bright idea; granted that it was an illusion, of which momentarily he was the victim, then, perhaps, all that was necessary was to adapt himself to the fantasy, while its power was upon him; to play up to it, to behave as though it were real, to do as he would do if a hornet, or a beetle, or a butterfly, or a bat had got into the room; to catch it and kill it, and make a specimen of it. If he could only reduce it to the condition of a specimen, he left quite sure that the hallucination would go and the scientific balance of his mind be restored.

And there, close at hand, lay the means, the instrument with which to experiment—a large green butterfly net on a bamboo cane, standing in the corner rack behind him.

The creature was still looking into the case of stuffed birds; it had its back to him. Net in hand, the Professor advanced cautiously, intent on capture. Catching sight of his reflection in the glass the imp turned and fled; it jumped on to the writing-table, jumped on to the back of his chair, jumped over the screen and vanished.

There came a knock at the door. Miss Tuckey entered.

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I thought I heard—something. Did you call, sir?”

The Professor stood, butterfly net in hand, rather at a loss how to account for himself. He was not going to tell Miss Tuckey that he was mad, whatever he might have to tell the Doctor.

“No, no,” he said, giving the net a flourish as he spoke. “I was only just practising. As a matter of fact, a butterfly has got into the room—a rare one, I think—and I was trying to catch it. I fancy that now it has gone behind that screen—will you look, Miss Tuckey?... Will you drive it out? Don’t be afraid; it won’t bite you.”

Miss Tuckey smiled to herself at the idea of being afraid of a butterfly; the Professor did say curious things sometimes, old age had made him a little eccentric.

She went behind the screen; the Professor stood expectant, very much interested. Miss Tuckey had pulled out her handkerchief, and was flapping it. “No,” she said, “I don’t think anything’s here.”

“Oh, thank you, it doesn’t matter, then,” said the Professor. “By the way, I’m expecting the Doctor. Will you send him up when he comes?”

Miss Tuckey departed, and he was alone again—alone with his hallucination. Clearly, she had seen nothing. He wondered whether it was still there, waiting for him to treat it as though it were real.

He advanced cautiously, and peeped. Then suddenly at his back he heard the cry of the spring peewit. “Peweet! Peweet! Just-look-at-me! Just-look-at-me!” And there was the green imp bounding and tumbling, as ready for a game of catch-as-catch-can as a young flea on the first of March; and if you have ever tried to catch one on that day you know the difficulty.

The Professor never had, so knew nothing about it; but now was his opportunity: a weapon was in his hand, and the net of it was large and the handle of it was long. And so for a few moments you have the degrading spectacle of an eminent scientist, and an O.M., pursuing on the material plane something which he did not really believe to exist.

But the pursuit was soon over. The imp was too agile, the pace too killing; and the Professor in his stumbling course managed to knock over a great many things he did not intend to. He stopped exhausted, put down the net, and began to pick up his scattered papers.

The imp, imitative, seeing him thus occupied, made a playful addition to his task by scattering more.

At this the Professor thoroughly lost his temper. “Hallucination,” he cried, “you are a perfect nuisance!”

As he spoke he opened a small chest and, to get them out of harm’s way, began bundling the papers into it.

With a sportive dive, the imp plunged into the chest and scattered them out again. It was clear that he regarded this merely as a game; and the green butterfly net had given him his excuse.

The imp made a playful addition to his task.
]

But it gave him nothing else; for on this last bit of exasperating frivolity the Professor slammed down the lid and locked it. And there was the Tree-imp safely boxed inside.

It took him a minute or two to realize his triumph; it was, indeed, a little difficult to know on what lines to take it. Had the locking of the box, with the hallucination inside, disposed of the hallucination? Or was it still there?

His doubt was solved almost at once, for from the inside of the chest the hallucination had once more become audible.

“What? What? Oh, I say! Let it out! Let it out! Quick, quick! Oh, why?” The voice was a little plaintive, a little anxious, but it had not yet begun seriously to complain. Then followed a pause.

The Professor stood considering; he had the key; going across to his writing-table, he laid it down. The chest continued to give forth sound: first a tapping on the lid, then a renewed chatter, which gradually grew faint.

The Professor drew a firm breath, and with a big effort of will took up his pen and tried to resume his writing: but the interest of the thing held him. The little secluded voice took on a more lamentable accent, but faint like a kettle trying to sing under a tea-cosy.

“I say! I say! Pick it out! Pick it out! What? What? Oh, why?... What?... Oh, why?... Oh!... Oh!... Oh!”

The sound was now so faint the Professor himself could no longer hear it; but for a little while it still went on. Once more from inside the chest came audibly that question so often repeated, “Oh, why?” Then all was still.

The Professor sat resolutely holding his pen, collecting his thoughts, trying not to listen, but listening still. And though he assured himself that his mind really had recovered its balance at last, he gave a sharp start when there came a knock at the door and the Doctor entered.

The Doctor, with an encouraging smile, greeted him in the correct tone of professional optimism. “How are you, Professor? Nothing very serious, I hope?”

The Professor, in no hurry to give himself away, held himself in. He was now feeling a little aggrieved at the shock he had experienced.

“Doctor, before I say anything, I want you to examine me,” he said.

The Doctor examined him, questioned him as to diet and sleep, felt his pulse, took his temperature, looked at his tongue, and then assured him that he found nothing the matter with him except old age.

“Am I mad?” inquired the Professor.

“Certainly not,” said the Doctor.

“You won’t send me to a lunatic asylum, if I tell you something you can’t believe?”

“I will not, I promise you,” replied the Doctor.

“I can’t believe it myself,” said the Professor.

“Then why talk about it?” said the Doctor.

“Because——” The Professor looked at the locked chest, then he said:

“I was sitting here writing, Doctor, and suddenly I glanced up, and there I saw a horrid little green thing looking at me—with eyes.”

“Yes, it would have eyes, if it was looking at you,” said the Doctor.

“Very curious eyes, Doctor—like a young bird’s and it had horns, and—well, there it was, you know. At first I didn’t believe it, I thought it was green tea.”

So the story started, and so, up to a certain point, it went on, as we know it: the Professor telling quite truthfully all that had happened, till he came to the point where he had upset his papers. “I was still picking them up,” he said, “when you came in.”

“Well?” said the Doctor, “and then——”

The Professor looked at the key, and he looked at the chest. No, he could not risk it: he could not risk having it proved that the thing he could not believe was really true.

“Then,” he said, “it disappeared.”

“And you haven’t seen it since?”

“No.”

“Nor heard it?”

“I have not——. That is, _no_.”

“Well, then, that is all right,” said the Doctor encouragingly.

But the Professor wasn’t happy. “I hope so,” he said doubtfully, and then, in more detail, began to explain himself.

“Doctor, I haven’t explained to you the shock it was to me. It was that terrible moment when I thought there might be something in it after all. At that moment I saw all my life’s work disappear. All my science, all my philosophy gone! Everything I had written—worth nothing! It was terrible. If it were true,” he said after a pause, “I think I should have to kill myself.”

The Doctor soothed him: told him to work less, take walks, go early to bed, drink less green tea, and then, after writing him a prescription, took his comfortable leave.

The Doctor’s visit had undoubtedly done the Professor good; but no sooner was the Doctor’s back turned than he went and stood by the chest and listened.

He listened for a long time and heard nothing. Then he stooped and tapped.

“Is anyone——? Is anything there?” he said.

There was no answer.

Much relieved, he went back to his work-table, and was just settling down again when his eye fell upon the key.

Twice he took hold of it, and twice laid it down again.

“No, I will not,” he said.

And that being decided, his mind recovered its accustomed balance, and he fell to work again.

The clock had just struck twelve, when the door quietly opened and in came Elfrida.

Now it so happened that, that day, Elfrida was dressed all in green—even the cap on her head was green, and it had a green feather in it, sticking out. And so, as Elfrida came softly up to him, seeing something green moving it gave him a dreadful start, till a second look at her over the top of his glasses reassured him.

“Effie! Why Effie, my dear,” he cried, “what a start you gave me!”

Elfrida nodded and laughed, and, wise in her way, said, “You thought I was a fairy.”

“No, I didn’t,” cried the Professor. “I thought you were an hallucination.”

“What’s that?” inquired Elfrida.

“Something that’s not real, my dear.”

Then Elfrida kissed him. “I’m real!” she said, and the Professor thanked God for it, feeling that an uncomfortable incident was well over.

All at once Elfrida began, very excited.

“Oh! you got my letter, Grandpapa, didn’t you? And you got my present, too?”

“I got your letter, my dear. What present?”

“Why, the leaf that came off the tree that had fairies in it.”

“Oh, yes, I got it, my dear; but I’m afraid I’ve lost it.”

Elfrida didn’t mind his losing the leaf; but she was very excited about the fairies.

“And you do believe what I told you,” she cried, “don’t you, Grandpapa? It was _true_; I _saw_ them. You must believe that!”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the Professor wisely. “One isn’t sure of everything one sees. At least, I’m not now.”

But Elfrida was now only attending to herself, for she had much to say.

“Grandpapa, if you could only make people _know_ there are fairies, wouldn’t it be wonderful?”

“I suppose it would, my dear.”

“And Grandpapa, if you were able to find one for them, wouldn’t that be the wonderfullest thing of all?”

“Would it, my dear?”

The Professor was listening; he was almost beginning to think.

“Why, yes; for then they’d think you ever such a great person—much greater than you are now. To make the whole world think differently—just think of that!”

“But, my dear, if people—people who’ve read all my books—were told that Professor Braintree believed in fairies, they would laugh.”

“You’d laugh too: but you could laugh longer than they would—because you’d have discovered it. Why, it would be like a miracle, Grandpapa. People would begin to _love_ fairies again then.”

The Professor was really thinking now, thinking hard; but all he said was: “Well, perhaps. Green isn’t my favourite colour, though.”

This caused Elfrida to pay attention. “It’s funny your saying that,” she remarked. “The fairy _I_ saw was green.”

“Was it, my dear?”

“And it had long horns, and its mouth and eyes were like a young bird’s; and when I tried to catch it, it made a noise at me—just like a bird—a nice bird.”

The Professor was now having shocks again, but all he said was: “Did it say, ‘Sick, sick, sick, sick’?”

“No,” replied Elfrida, and then, giving a vivid imitation of the very sound he had heard, “It just went ‘Chewee! chewee!’—like that.”

The Professor sat with his eyes staring out of his head: then he hadn’t been so mad after all! But not to be was almost worse.

Elfrida looked at him in great surprise. “But, Grandpapa,” she cried, “if you found one, you wouldn’t be afraid of it, would you? I wasn’t!”

That was a wise word of Elfrida’s; it came a little late, but it converted him.

“My dear,” he said, “would you like to see that—that thing again?”

“Why, yes!” cried Elfrida.

“Green, and with horns and eyes? Hear it again?”

Elfrida was joyfully prepared even for that.

“Well,” he said, giving her the key, “there’s no accounting for tastes!”

He had quite made up his mind now, and did not wait to let himself think again.

“You see that chest?” he went on. “Well, that is the key to it. Go and open it, and tell me what you find.”

Elfrida took the key; she was rather solemn about it, for the Professor’s manner impressed her. She crossed the room, opened the chest, and looked in. While she did so, there was much more excitement in the Professor’s demeanour than in hers.

For a while she stood looking in, seeing nothing. Then she uttered a little cry, and stooped, and picked up something. She held it out in her hand. “Why, it’s the leaf,” she cried, “the leaf of that tree what I sent you! Oh, dear!”

This was quite unexpected to both of them.

“The leaf, you say?” replied the Professor. “Bring it here.”

Elfrida brought it.

“And it’s all withered and dead!” she cried, holding it up for his inspection.

The Professor looked at it with curious eyes, and was no longer afraid.

“So it is, to be sure!” he said. “Quite withered and dead. Well, put it down, my dear, and be off with you. I must get on with my work.”

“Where shall I put it?” inquired Elfrida.

“Put it in the waste-paper basket, my dear. That’s right. Now run away!”

Coming through the palings was a long string of little figures.
]

And so the dead leaf dropped to its repose on a bed of scrapped science-siftings. And though Elfrida did not quite know what she had done, she felt sad about it, and with head bent and hands straight down, as though convicted of some act of deep disgrace, she turned and walked softly out of the room.

As the door closed behind her, the Professor stooped down, and took a good long look into the waste-paper basket. Then, with a deep sigh of relief, he took up his pen and went on with his work.

But that night—no, it was the night after—something happened.

Quite suddenly Elfrida woke and sat up; in her sleep she had remembered something. She remembered how, that morning, she had seen the maid emptying her pan on the dust-heap in a corner of the garden behind the house, a pan full of torn papers, and litter, and sweepings—the sort of things which were emptied there every day.

Why Elfrida should so suddenly remember it, and be woken up by it, she did not know.

She was quite awake, quite dreadfully awake. The moon was shining through the blind. She got up, went across and lifted it, and looked out.

There was the garden, softly paved with the silver of moonlight, so silver that it looked like frost. And out beyond, over the wooden palings, lay Richmond Park.

And there, coming through the palings were little figures, a long string of them, crossing the garden and going in the direction of the dust-heap.

They were searching the dust-heap.
]

Presently she saw that they were searching it, turning it over this way and that. And then it seemed as if they had found something.

What she saw next, she never told anybody but me; and she only told me because she knew that I would believe it.

“It was like a funeral!” she said. “They had all put on black, and as they walked they flapped with their hands, and swung their heads from side to side as if they were so sorry about something. And in the middle they had something that they carried, like the thing that carries dead people. And they brought it to the palings, and pushed it through, and then got through themselves; and after that they took it right away into Richmond Park, over the grass and through the trees, till I couldn’t see them any more.”

“Do you think,” she asked, when she had quite finished her story, “do you think it could have been—_that leaf_?”

I did think—that it was possible.

“And that it had a fairy in it?”

“Well, yes, that would account for it, wouldn’t it? That would explain.”

“Then the fairy must have been dead,” she said sadly.

Yes, I had to own that it seemed like it.

“Did I kill the fairy, by sending it in the letter, do you think?”

“No, I don’t think you did, my dear,” I replied. “Fairies don’t die like that; they die of shock.”

“What kind of shock?” she asked. “When I shock Auntie, she doesn’t die of it.”

“_When people don’t believe in them_,” I said.

LUCY _By WALTER DE LA MARE_

Once upon a time there were three sisters, the Misses MacKnackery—or, better still, the Miss MacKnackeries. They lived in a large, white, square mansion called Stoneyhouse; and their names were Euphemia, Tabitha, and Jean Elspeth. They were known over Scotland for miles and miles, from the Tay to the Grampians—from the Tay to the Grumpy Ones, as a cousin who did not like Euphemia and Tabitha used to say.

Stoneyhouse had been built by the Miss MacKnackeries’s grandfather, Mr. Angus MacKnackery, who, from being a poor boy with scarcely a bawbee in his breeches pocket, had risen up to be a wealthy manufacturer of the best Scotch burlap, which is a kind of sacking. He made twine, too, for tying up parcels. He would have made almost anything to make money. But at last, when he was sixty-six, he felt he would like to be a gentleman living in the country with a large garden to walk about in, flowers in beds, cucumbers in frames, and one or two cows for milk, cream, and butter.

So he sold his huge, smoky works and warehouse, and all the twine and burlap, hemp, jute, and whalebone still in it, for £80,000. With this £80,000 he built Stoneyhouse, purchased some fine furniture and some carriages and horses, and invested what was over.

Jean Elspeth, when she was learning sums, and when she had come to Interest—having sometimes heard her father and mother speak of her grandfather and of his fortune, and how he had invested it—just to please her governess, Miss Gimp, thought she would make a sum of it. So she wrote down in her rather straggly figures in an exercise book:

£80,000 @ £4 per centum per annum
= £80,000 × 4 ÷ 100 = £52,000.

It was the first really enjoyable sum she had ever done. And yet Miss Gimp was a little put about when Jean Elspeth showed it to her father. Still, Mr. MacKnackery, senior, had been a really rich man, and regretted that the gentleman who bought his factory never could afterwards make such fine burlap as himself, nor even such admirable twine.

He lived to be eighty, and then he died, leaving his money to his son, Robert Duncan Donald David, Jean Elspeth’s father. And when _he_ died, his dear wife Euphemia Tabitha being dead too, he left all that was over of the £80,000 (for, alas and alas! he had lost a good part of it) to his three daughters: Euphemia, Tabitha, and Jean Elspeth.

When Jean Elspeth was old enough to breakfast with the family in the big dining-room with the four immense windows, she used to sit opposite the portraits of her grandfather, her father, and her mother. They hung in heavy handsome gilt frames on the wall opposite the windows. And while in her high chair she gobbled up her porridge—and gobbled it up quickly, not so much because she liked it as because she hated being put in the corner for not eating it—she would sit and look at them.

Her grandfather’s was by far the largest of the three portraits, and it hung in the very middle of the lofty wall, under the moulded ceiling. He was a stout and imposing man, with bushy whiskers and cold bright blue eyes. The thumb and first finger of his right hand held a fine thick Albert watch-chain, which the painter had painted so skilfully that you could see it was eighteen-carat gold at a single glance. So he hung, for ever boldly gazing.

What was more, her grandfather always looked exactly as if he was on the point of taking out his watch to see the time; and Jean Elspeth had the odd notion that, if he ever did succeed in so doing, its hands would undoubtedly point to a quarter to twelve. But she could no more have told you why, than she could tell you why she used to count each spoonful of her porridge, or why she felt happier when the last spoonful was an odd number.

The portrait of her father was that of a man much less stout and imposing than her grandfather. He was dark, and smiling, and he had no whiskers. But Jean Elspeth had loved him dearly, and each morning when she had finished her breakfast (and if nobody was looking) she would give a tiny little secret wave of the spoon towards him, as if he might be pleased at seeing her empty plate.

On the other side of her grandfather’s portrait hung a picture of her mother. And the odd thing about this picture was that, if you looked long enough, you could not help seeing—as if it were almost the ghost of Jean Elspeth—her very own small face, peeping out of the paint at you, just like a tiny little green marmoset out of a cage all to itself in the Zoo. Jean Elspeth had discovered this when she was only seven; but Euphemia and Tabitha had never noticed it at all.

They knew they were far less like their mother (who had been a Miss Reeks MacGillicuddy of Kelso) than their grandfather, and they were exceedingly proud of _that_. As for Jean Elspeth, they didn’t think she was like any of the family at all. Indeed, Euphemia had more than once remarked that Jean Elspeth had “no deegnity,” and Tabitha that “she micht just as weel ha’ been a changeling.” Even now, when they were elderly ladies, they always treated her as if she were still not very far from being a child, though, after all, Jean Elspeth was only five years younger than Tabitha.

But then, how different she was in looks! For while Tabitha had a long pale face a little like a horse, with mouse-colored hair and green-grey eyes, Jean Elspeth was dark and small, with red in her cheek and a tip to her nose. And while Tabitha’s face changed very little, Jean Elspeth’s was like a dark little glancing pool on an April morning. Sometimes it looked almost centuries older than either of her sisters’, and then, again, sometimes it looked simply no age at all.

It depended on what she was doing—whether she was sitting at seven o’clock dinner on Great Occasions, when the Bults and the McGaskins, and Dr. Menzies were guests, or merely basking idly in the sunshine at her bedroom window. Jean Elspeth would sometimes, too, go wandering off by herself over the hills a mile or two away from the house. And _then_ she looked not a minute older than looks an elf-child, or a whinchat, perched with his white eyebrow on a fuzz-bush near a lichenous half-hidden rock among the heather.

However sad, too, she looked, she never looked grim. And even though (at dinner parties) she parted her hair straight down the middle, and smoothed the sides over as sleek as satin, she simply could not look what is called “superior.” Besides, she had lips that were the colour of cherries, and curious quick hands that she was sometimes compelled to clasp together lest they should talk even more rapidly than her tongue.

Now in Stoneyhouse nobody—except perhaps the tweeny-maid and the scullery-maid, Sally and Nancy McGullie, who were cousins—ever talked _much_. It was difficult even to tell exactly how wise and sagacious and full of useful knowledge Euphemia and Tabitha were, simply because they so seldom opened their mouths, except at meals. And never to sing.

This, maybe, was because it is impossible to keep order if everybody’s tongue keeps wagging. It wastes time, too, for only very few people can work hard and talk hard both at the same time. And in Stoneyhouse everything was in apple-pie order (except the beds), and nobody ever wasted any time.

And yet, although time was never wasted, nobody seemed to be very much the better off for any that was actually “saved.” Nobody had ever managed to pack some of it up in neat brown-paper parcels, or to put it in a bank as Mr. MacKnackery, senior, had put his money, or to pour it into jars like home-made jam. It just went. And in Stoneyhouse (until, at least, Euphemia one morning received a certain letter) it went very very slowly. The big hands of its clocks seemed to be envious of the little ones. They crept like shadows. And between their “tick” and their “tock” at times yawned a huge hole, as dark as a cellar. So, at least, Jean Elspeth fancied.

Jean Elspeth would sometimes go wandering off by herself over the
hills.
]

One glance at Stoneyhouse, even from the outside, would tell you how orderly it was. The four high white walls, with their large square slate roof fixed firmly on top of them, stood stiff as bombardiers on extremely solid foundations, and they on even solider rock. No tree dared cast a shadow upon them, no creeper crept. The glossy windows, with their straight lines of curtains behind them, just stared down on you as if they said, “Find the faintest speck or smear or flaw in us if you can!” And you hadn’t the courage even to try.

It was just so inside. Everything was in its place. Not only the great solid pieces of substantial furniture which Mr. MacKnackery had purchased with his burlap money—wardrobes, coffers, presses, four-posters, chests-of-drawers, sideboards, tables, sofas, chairs—but even all the little things, bead-mats, footstools, candle-snuffers, boottrees, ornaments, knick-knacks, Euphemia’s silks and Tabitha’s water-colours. There was a place for everything, and everything was in its place. Yes, and kept there.

_Except_ in Jean Elspeth’s room. She could never learn to be tidy, not even in her sums. She was constantly taking things out, and either forgetting to put them away again, or putting them away again in their wrong places. And do you suppose she blamed herself for this? Not at all. When she lost anything and had been looking for it for hours and hours—a book, or a brooch, or a ribbon, or a shoe—she would say to herself, laughing all over, “Well now, there! That _Lucy_ must have hidden it!” And presently _there_ it would be, right in the middle of her dressing-table or under a chair, as if it had been put back there just for fun.

And who was this “_Lucy_”? There couldn’t be a more difficult question; and Jean Elspeth had never attempted to answer it. It was one of those questions she never even asked herself, at least, not out loud. This, perhaps, was because she hated the thought of hurting anybody’s feelings. As if Lucy—but, never mind!

It was Lucy, at any rate, who so unfortunately came into that dreadful talk over the porridge on the morning when the fatal letter came to Euphemia. It arrived just like any other letter. The butler, with his mouth as closely shut as usual, laid it beside Euphemia’s plate. Judging from its large white envelope, nobody could possibly have thought it was as deadly as a poison and sharper than a serpent’s tooth. Euphemia opened it, too, just as usual—with her long, lean forefinger, and her eyebrows lifted a little under her grey front of hair. And then she read it, and turned to ice.

It was from her lawyer, or rather from her Four Lawyers, for they all shared the same office, and at the foot of the letter one of them had signed all their four names. It was a pitch-black letter—a thunderbolt. It said at the beginning that the Miss MacKnackeries must expect in future to be less well off than they had been in the past, and it said at the end that they were ruined.

You see, Euphemia’s grandfather had lent what remained of his £80,000 (after building Stoneyhouse and buying furniture, cucumber-seed, horses, cows, and so on) to the British Government, for the use of the British nation. The British Government of that day put the money into what were called the Consolidated Funds. And to show how much obliged they were to Mr. MacKnackery for the loan of it, they used every year to pay him interest on it—so many shillings for every hundred pounds. Not so much as £4 per centum, as Jean Elspeth had put down in her sum, but as much as they could afford—and that was at least 1,000,000 bawbees. There couldn’t have been a safer money-box; nor could Mr. MacKnackery’s income have “come in” more regularly if it had come in by clockwork. So far the British Government resembled Stoneyhouse itself.

But the Miss MacKnackeries’s father was not only a less imposing man than their grandfather, he had been much less careful of his money. He delighted in _buying_ things and giving presents, and the more he spent the more he wanted to spend. So he had gradually asked for his money back from the British Government, using some of it and lending the rest to persons making railways and gasworks in foreign parts, and digging up gold and diamonds, and making scent out of tar, and paint which they said would never wear off or change colour, and everything like that.

These persons paid him for helping them like this a good deal more than the Consolidated Funds could pay. But then gasworks are not always so _safe_ as the British nation. It is what is called a speculation to lend gentlemen money to help them to dig up diamonds or to make waterworks in Armenia, which means that you cannot be perfectly sure of getting it back again. Often and often, indeed, the Miss MacKnackeries’s father had not got _his_ money back.

And now—these long years after his death—the worst had befallen. The Four Lawyers had been suddenly compelled to tell the Miss MacKnackeries that nearly every bit left of their grandfather’s savings was gone; that their bright gold had vanished like the glinting mists of a June morning. They had for some time been accustomed to growing less and less rich; but that’s a very different thing from becoming desperately poor. It is the difference between a mouse with a fat slice of cheese and a mouse without a crumb.

Euphemia, before opening the letter, had put on her pince-nez. As she read, the very life seemed to ebb out of her countenance, leaving it cold and grey. She finished it to the last word, then with a trembling hand took the glasses off her nose and passed the letter to Tabitha. Tabitha could still read without spectacles. Her light eyes passed rapidly to and fro across the letter, then she, too, put it down, her face not pale, but red and a little swollen. “It is the end, Euphemia,” she said.

Jean Elspeth was sitting that morning with her back to the portraits, and at the moment was gently munching a slice of dry toast and Scotch marmalade (made by the Miss MacKnackeries’s cook, Mrs. O’Phrump). She had been watching a pied wagtail flitting after flies across the smooth shorn lawn on the white stone terrace. Then her gaze had wandered off to the blue outline of the lovely distant hills, the Grumpy Ones, and her mind had slid into a kind of day-dream.

Into the very middle of this day-dream had broken the sound of Tabitha’s words, “It is the end, Euphemia”; and it was as if a trumpet had uttered them.

She looked round in dismay, and saw her sisters, Euphemia and Tabitha, sitting there in their chairs at the table, as stiff and cold as statues of stone. Not only this, which was not so very unusual, but they both of them looked extremely unwell. _Then_ she noticed the letter. And she knew at once that this must be the serpent that had suddenly bitten her sisters’ minds. The blood rushed up into her cheeks, and she said—feeling more intensely sorry for them both than she could possibly express—“Is there anything wrong, Euphemia?”

And Euphemia, in a voice Jean Elspeth would certainly not have recognized if she had heard it from outside the door, replied, “You may well ask it.” And then in a rush Jean Elspeth remembered her strange dream of the night before, and at once went blundering on: “Well, you know, Euphemia, I had a dream last night, all dark and awful, and, in it, _there_ was _Lucy_ looking out of a crooked window over some water. And she said to me——”

She knew that Lucy was somewhere close beside her.
]

But Tabitha interrupted her: “I think, Elspeth, neither myself nor Euphemia at this moment wish to hear what Lucy, as you call her, said in your dream. We have received exceedingly bad news this morning, that intimately concerns not only Tabitha and me, but even yourself also. And this is no time for frivolity.” And it sounded even more tragic in her Scots tongue.

Jean Elspeth had not meant to be frivolous. She had hoped merely, and if but for a moment, to turn her sisters’ minds away from this dreadful news that had come with the postman, and to explain what her dream had seemed to promise. But no. It was just her way. Whenever she said anything to her sisters, anything that came from the very bottom of her heart, she always made a muddle of it. It sounded as small and meaningless as the echo of a grasshopper’s chirrup against a bare stone wall. They would look at her out of their green-grey eyes, down their long pale noses, with an expression either grim or superior, or both. Of course, too, at such a moment, any mention of Lucy was a dreadfully silly mistake. Even at the best of times they despised Jean Elspeth for such “childishness,” and now it must seem like a hideous joke.

For there never was and there never could be any _real_ Lucy. It was only a name. And yet Jean Elspeth still longed to find any word of hope or comfort that would bring back a little colour into poor Euphemia’s cheeks, and make her look a little less like an image in marble. But no word came. She had even failed to hear what her sisters were saying. At last she could bear herself no longer.

She would sometimes sit on one flower-pot, and she would put another
flower-pot for Lucy.
]

“I am sure, Euphemia, that you would like to talk the letter over with Tabitha in quiet, and that you will tell me if I can be of any help, I think I will go out into the garden.”

Euphemia bowed her head. And though, by trying to move it with as little noise as possible, Jean Elspeth made her heavy chair give a loud screech on the polished floor, she managed to escape at last.

It was a cold, clear spring morning, and the trees in the distance were just tipped with their new green buds. The gardeners were already mapping out their rows of plants in the herbaceous borders, in preparation for the summer. There never was a garden “kept” so well. The angles of the flower-beds on the lawn—diamonds and lozenges, octagons, squares, and oblongs—were as sharp as if they had been cut out of cardboard with a pair of scissors. Not a blade of grass was out of place.

If even one little round pebble pushed up a shoulder in the gravel path, up came an immense heavy roller and ground him back into his place. As for a weed, let but one poke her blunt green nose above the black mould, she would soon see what happened.

The bright light from the sky streamed down upon the house, and every single window in the high white wall of it seemed to be scornfully watching Jean Elspeth as she made her way down to a little straight green seat under the terrace. Here, at least, she was out of their sight.

She sat down, folded her hands in her lap, and looked straight in front of her. She always so sat when she was in trouble. In vain she tried to compose and fix her mind and to _think_. It was impossible. For she had not been there more than a moment or two before she knew that Lucy was haunting somewhere close beside her. So close and so much on purpose, as it were, that it was almost as if she wanted to whisper something in her ear.

She was sitting in a corner by the large cupboard.
]

Now it has been said that Lucy was only a name. Yet, after all, she was a little more than that. Years and years ago, when Jean Elspeth was only seven, she “sort of” made Lucy up. It was simply because there was no one else to play with, for Tabitha was five years older, and at least fifty-five times more sensible and intelligent and grown-up. So Jean Elspeth had just pretended.

In those days she would sometimes sit on one flower-pot on the long hot or windy terrace, and she would put another flower-pot for Lucy. And they would talk, or rather she would talk, and Lucy would look. Or sometimes they sat together in a corner of the great bare nursery. And sometimes Jean Elspeth would pretend she was holding Lucy’s hand when she fell asleep.

And the really odd thing was that the less in those days she tried to “pretend,” the more Lucy came. And though Jean Elspeth had never seen her with what is called her naked eye, she must have seen her with some other kind of eye, for she knew that her hair and skin were fairer than the fairest of flax, and that she was dressed in very light and old-fashioned clothes, though she could not say _how_ old-fashioned.

Another queer thing was that Lucy always seemed to come and appear entirely out of nothing, and entirely of herself, when anything very odd or unexpected or sad or very beautiful happened, and sometimes just before they happened. That had been why she had told Euphemia her dream of the night before. For though everything else in the dream had been dark and dismal, and the water had roared furiously over its rocks, breaking into foam like snow, and Jean Elspeth had been shaken with terror, Lucy herself appearing at the window had been more beautiful than moonlight and comforting as a star.

It was a pity, of course, that Jean Elspeth had ever so much as mentioned Lucy at all. But that had been years and years ago and then she could not really help doing so. For Tabitha had crept up behind her one morning—it was on her eighth birthday—while she was sitting in a corner by the large cupboard, with her back to the nursery door, and had overheard her talking to someone.

“Aha! little Miss Toad-in-the-hole; and who are _you_ talking to?” Tabitha had asked.

Jean Elspeth had turned cold all over. “Nobody,” she said.

“Oh, Nobody is it? Then you just tell me Nobody’s name,” said Tabitha.

And Jean Elspeth had refused. Unfortunately, she had been wearing that morning a high-waisted frock, with sleeves that came down only to the elbow, and though Tabitha, with nips and pinches of her bare skinny arm could not make Jean Elspeth cry, she had at least made her tell.