"No, you won't," she declared triumphantly, "'cause then I wouldn't play with you. I'd just go right back to Granma MacDonald and leave you all alone in the bush. An' I wouldn't show you all the places here. There's a king's castle an' a hole where the goblins comes out of, an' a tree where a bad, bad dwarf lives, an'--an'," she was whispering now, "an' heaps of dreadfuller things than that 'way down there." She pointed into the green depths with an air of proprietorship. Scotty felt a deep respect rising in his heart.

He had thought he knew the forest as the chipmunks know it, but here it was in a new and romantic aspect.

"Where are they?" he inquired quite humbly; and, satisfied with his demeanour, his mentor led the way. Though the royal castle proved to be only a rock and the other enchanted places equally familiar to Scotty, she clothed them with such an air of mystery and related such amazing tales concerning each, vouched for by no less an authority than Weaver Jimmie, that her listener regarded them and their exponent with something like awe.

They journeyed on, every new turn revealing untold wonders and giving an added stimulus to the leader's lively imagination. And indeed the forest was a place in which anyone might expect to meet a fairy or a goblin behind every tree. The happy sense of unreality lent by the uncertainty of distances, the airy unsubstantial appearance of the leaf-grown earth; the dazzling splashes of golden light on the green, the sudden appearance of open glades choked with blossoms; and through all the ringing harmony of a hundred songsters combined to make the woods a veritable fairyland.

And Scotty soon found to his joy that he was to have his part in interpreting its beauties too, for Isabel came to the end of her tales at last and was full of questions. What was that sad little "tee-ee-ee," somebody was always saying away far off. It must be a fairy too. But Scotty had come down to realities now, and felt more at home. That? Why, that was only a whitethroat. Didn't she hear how it said, "Hard-times-in-Canady!" She laughed aloud and imitated the song, setting all the woods a-ring with her clear notes. And what made those bells ring up in the tree? Those weren't bells, they were just veerys, and they said, "Ting-a-ling-a-lee!" But the bobolinks had bells; they would go back to the clearing and hear them ring in the hayfield, and there was a meadow-lark's nest there, and lots of plovers; yes, and if she would come down to the creek that ran across the Scotch line he would show her a mud turtle, and they could catch some fish, and there was a boiling spring there, where the water was so cold you couldn't put your feet into it, and it bubbled all the time, even in the winter.

And then they found flowers, oh, so many flowers, big, pink, bobbing ladles' slippers, and delicate orchids and great flaming swamp lilies; and there were wonderful pitcher-plants, too, with their tall crimson blossoms. Scotty explained the workings of the perfidious little vessels, and they sat down and watched with absorbed interest the poor foolish insects slip happily down the silken stairway to certain death.

And under Isabel's magic touch the little green pitchers became dungeons, presided over by a wicked giant, and filled with helpless prisoners.

And so they might have rambled in this enchanted land all day had not the woman nature a.s.serted itself. Isabel had had enough of fairies and goblins. They must give up this wandering life and settle down, she declared. They would build a house in the fence corner and carpet it with moss and have clam sh.e.l.ls from the creek for dishes. Scotty had fallen quite meekly into the unaccustomed role of follower and was willing that they should go housekeeping, provided he was allowed to play the man's part. He would be Big Wind, the Indian who lived down by Lake Simcoe, and he would go off shooting bears and Lowlanders all day, and she would stay at home and be his squaw and make baskets. But Miss Isabel would be nothing of the kind. She did not like "scraws"; they were very dirty, and came to the back door and sold their baskets.

But Scotty might be a great hunter if he wanted, and she would be the lady who lived in the house, and she would cook the dinner and go to the door and call "hoo-hoo" when it was ready, the way Kirsty did when Long Lauchie's boys worked in her fields.

"I see Kirsty now!" she called, seating herself upon a log which formed one side of their mansion. "I see her 'way over yonder!" Scotty seated himself beside her, flushed and heated with the unwonted exertions of house-building.

"Oh, don't you love Kirsty," she cried, giving him an ecstatic shake.

"I do; an' I love you, too, Scotty, you're a dear!" Scotty looked slightly uncomfortable, but not wholly displeased.

"Don't you love to run away off in the bush like this, and have n.o.body to bother you?" she inquired next.

"Yes." Scotty could cordially a.s.sent to that. "When I get a man," he said, in a sudden burst of confidence, "I'm goin' to live in a wigwam like Big Wind an' shoot bears!"

"Oh, my!" she cried in delight. "I wish I could live with you, only I don't want to be an ugly scraw, I want to be like Kirsty when I grow big, an' live up here in the Oa, an' pile hay; but I'll have to be like Auntie Eleanor an' wear a black silk dress, oh, dear!"

"Wouldn't you be liking a silk dress?" asked Scotty in surprise.

"No!" she cried disdainfully. "You've always got to take care of it.

I want a red petticoat like Kirsty wears, and I want to go in my bare feet all the time, and live in the bush."

"Don't you go in your bare feet at home?" inquired Scotty in amazement.

"No," she admitted mournfully. "Auntie Eleanor says 'tisn't nice for little girls, an' I have to play the piano every morning, an' not make any noise round the house, 'cause you know my poor auntie has headaches all the time. Do you know what's the matter with my auntie?"

"No."

"Well, don't you tell, it's a big secret; she's got the _heartbreak_!"

"The what?" cried Scotty in alarm.

"The heartbreak. Brian told me. Brian's our coachman, an' I heard him tell Mary Morrison, the cook, and he told me not to never, _never_ tell; but I'll just tell you, and you won't tell, will you, Scotty?"

"No, never. Will it be like the rheumatics Granny has?"

"No-o, I 'spect not; it's when you have headaches an' don't smile nor eat much; not even pie!" She gazed triumphantly into Scotty's interested countenance. "That's what my auntie's got."

"Would she be catching it at school?" he inquired feelingly, moved by recollections of an epidemic of measles that had raged in Number Nine the winter preceding.

"No, she just got it all by herself. She was going to be married in the church, 'way over in England, and she had a beautiful satin dress and a veil and everything, and he didn't come!"

"Who?" demanded Scotty.

"Why, the gempleman; he was a soldier-man with a grea' big sword, an'

he got bad an' went away, an' my auntie got the heartbreak. An' that's why she's sick an' doesn't want me to make a noise or jump."

Scotty looked at her in deep sympathy. "Won't she be letting you jump?" he asked in awe.

"Not much," she said with a fine martyr-like air. "She says 'tisn't lady-like, an' she's going to send me to a school in Toronto when I get big, where it's all girls, and not one of them ever, ever jumps once!"

They stared at each other in mutual amazement at the conception of a whole jumpless school.

"I wouldn't be going!" cried Scotty firmly. "_I'd_ jump--I'd jump out of the window an' run away, whatever!"

Her eyes sparkled. "Oh, p'raps I could do that too! I'd run away an'

come to Kirsty. She doesn't mind if I jump an' make a noise, an'

Kirsty never makes me sew. Oh, Scotty, you don't ever have to sew, do you?"

"Noh!" cried Scotty in disdain, "that's girls' work."

She sighed deeply. "I wish I was a boy! Harold never has to sew, but Harold goes to school 'way in Toronto all the time an' maybe they don't let him jump there. _I'd_ jump!" she cried, springing from the log and laughing joyously, "oh, wouldn't I! Last tag, Scotty!" and she was once more off into the woods and Scotty after her.

Such a happy day as it was, but it was over at last, and after they had eaten their supper, where Kirsty served it to them in their playhouse, Scotty went to the house to bid the old woman good-bye, and started for home.

The little girl followed him sadly and slowly to the edge of the clearing.

"When'll you come back again?" she asked pleadingly.

"I'll not know," said Scotty patronisingly, "I don't often play with girls."

The blue sunbonnet drooped; its owner's a.s.surance and independence had all vanished. "You might come next Sat.u.r.day," she suggested humbly.

"Well," said Scotty handsomely, "mebby I'll be coming."

"I'm going to ask Kirsty if I can't go to school with you some day!"

she cried audaciously.

Scotty looked alarmed. In reality he was most eager to return and resume housekeeping in the fence-corner, but to have this stranger go to school with him would never do. The boys would laugh at him, and already he had sufficient trials with Betty Lauchie since Peter stopped going to school.

"Oh, it's too far!" he cried hastily, "an' there will be an awful cross master there!"

"I don't care, you wouldn't let him touch me, would you?"

"If you don't ask Kirsty, I'll come over all next Sat.u.r.day, an' mebby she'll be letting you come to my place; it's nicer than school."

So thus comforted, Isabel climbed the stump and swung her sunbonnet as long as the slanting sunlight showed the little figure running down the fast darkening forest-pathway; and just before the shadows swallowed him up, he turned and waved his cap in farewell.