And--it wasn't _curiosity_."

"Indeed!" she replied, a tiny little bit mockingly; "not curiosity. What shall I call it, then, your inquiring minds, eh?"

I felt my face get red, and I felt that Tib's was getting red too.

"I don't know who you are," I burst out, "and if you don't choose to tell us, I am not going to ask. _That_ isn't curiosity. But I wish you hadn't come; you've spoilt it all. Our own princess," and I glanced up at the portrait, looking, I could not but confess, like a washed-out doll beside the brilliant living beauty of the girl beside us, "our own princess is much nicer than you. And if we had been so curious we might have tried to find out things in pokey ways. We've never done that."

I looked, I suppose ready to cry. The lady's face changed, and then I knew that while she had been talking in that half teasing way, something in her voice and smile had reminded me of grandpapa--of grandpapa, I mean, when he was in that sort of laughing-at-us way that we couldn't bear. Perhaps this had made us all feel more vexed at her than she really deserved us to be. But when her face changed, and a soft, sorry look came over it, she reminded me of _more_ than any real face I had ever seen--she reminded me of all the prettiest and nicest fancies I had ever had; the sweet look in her eyes was _so_ sweet, that I wished I might put my arms round her and kiss her. And Tib told me afterwards that she had felt exactly the same.

"I'm very sorry," she said, simply; "I didn't come here to hurt your feelings. Good fairies never do that, unless to very naughty children, whose feelings need to be hurt. And yours don't need to be hurt, for I know you're not naughty children--very far from it. Of course you wouldn't try to find out things in any way that wasn't nice, I know that. But wouldn't you like to know my name?"

"If you like to tell it," we said, smiling up at her.

"Or would you rather count me a sort of a fairy?" she went on.

"_Are_ you one?" said Gerald, softly stroking the pretty soft stuff of which her dress was made.

"Perhaps," she said, smiling again. "I shouldn't wonder if you could decide that better than I can. Try to find out--think of some things I couldn't know unless I were a fairy."

"I know," said Gerald; "_our_ names. You _couldn't_ know them if you weren't a fairy, or--or if perhaps you knowed some fairies who had told you them," he added, getting a little muddled.

"If I had a fairy G.o.dmother, for instance, who had told me them," she said.

"Yes--that might be it," said Gerald.

"Well, then--dear me, I mustn't make any mistake, or my G.o.dmother would be very angry, after all her teaching," she said, pretending to look very trying-to-remember, like Gerald when he stops at "eight times nine," and screws up his mouth and knits his brows. "Well, to begin with, the eldest. This is Tib--but her real name is Mercedes Regina; this is Gustava; and this is Gerald Charles. And Gustava is generally called 'Gussie.' Now, have I said my lesson rightly?"

We all stared at her.

"You must be a fairy," said Gerald. But Tib and I felt too puzzled to say anything.

"What shall we call you?" I asked.

"Anything you like. I've got a lot of names. One of them, curious to say, is the same as the name scribbled on the portrait just above the name of the painter. Did you ever notice it?"

"Do you mean the same name as Tib's second one?" I asked; "Regina?"

The young lady nodded her head.

"That's very funny," we said. "That's the name in the book in London too."

"What book?" she asked, quickly.

I hesitated a moment. Then I thought as I had said so much it would be stupid not to explain. So I told her. She looked sad and thoughtful as she listened.

"It was scored out, you said?" she asked.

"Yes, with a thick black stroke, as if somebody had been very angry when they did it," I said. "If we hadn't known the name, from its being Tib's, I don't think we could ever have made it out."

"Ah," said the young lady, and it sounded like a sigh. But in a moment she smiled again.

"I didn't come here to make you sad," she said. "Won't you tell me about the games you play, and let me play with you. Perhaps my fairy G.o.dmother has taught me some that you don't know and that you would like to learn."

But we didn't feel quite ready for playing games yet. There were two or three things on our minds. The new princess saw that we looked uncertain.

"What is it?" she said. "You look as if you were afraid of me."

"No," said Tib, and "No," said I. "It isn't that, but there are some things we want to ask you."

"Ask them. I won't call you curious, I prom----"

But just that moment a bell rang--not loudly, but she heard it at once, and started up. She had been sitting on one of the old couches, with us all about her. "I must go," she said. "Come to-morrow and I will tell you all I can. Good-bye; good-bye till to-morrow," and in half an instant--I never saw any one move so quick--she had gone. We heard a key turn in the lock of the double door outside, and that was all!

We looked at each other again without speaking. Surely she must be a fairy of some kind, after all!

CHAPTER IX.

OUR FAIRY.

"A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food."

WORDSWORTH.

It seemed a very long time to the next afternoon, and if Liddy hadn't been the most unnoticing old woman in the world, she would certainly have seen that there was something unusual in our heads. We could think of nothing but our new friend the fairy, or "the other princess," as Gerald would call her. Who could she be? where had she come from?

how--and this, perhaps, was the thing we wondered most about--how in the world did she know all about us, or our names, even down to our pet names, any way?

Then another thought was in my mind and Tib's. Grandpapa had told us to make no friends with the neighbours. Would it be disobeying him to go to meet the young lady in the saloon and play with her, as she had asked us?

"Is she a neighbour?" said Tib. "We don't know--we don't know if she lives there, or where she lives, or anything."

"We must ask her," I said; "any way, we must go and see her again to ask her. We must go to see her _once_, and we will tell her what grandpapa said."

"I think she is a fairy, and that she lives in Fairyland; and grandpapa didn't say we weren't to speak to fairies," said Gerald.

"Oh! how I wish Mr. Truro was here; we could ask him about it," I said.

"And there's another thing," said Tib: "we almost promised Mr. Truro we wouldn't say anything about the palace and all that to grandpapa just now--not till they came again. It's rather a muddle altogether, don't you think, Gussie?"

"I dare say she--we must get a name for her, Tib----"

"We'd better just call her Regina," Tib said. "She said it was her name."

"Well, I dare say Regina will tell us what she thinks we should do. Any way, as you say, we must go to see her once to tell her about it. I wonder what the bell was that rang, and made her rush off in such a hurry. That part of it was really very like a fairy story."

"If only she had left a slipper behind her, it would have been a little like Cinderella," I said; "though the deserted, quiet rooms, and that part of it, is more like the Sleeping Beauty."