CHAPTER I

The Little Door

FREDA and Daffy stood on the edge of a Great Discovery.

Have you ever done it? Then you will know how they felt; how their small hearts were thumping loudly; how to the tips of their toes and fingers they were trembling with that wonderful joyful excitement of the unknown in front of them.

They were just two small girls, very slim, with long legs and short frocks—holland frocks—smocked across their chests, and they wore limp sunburnt straw hats which kept the sun out of their eyes, for it was a very hot day in June.

Freda was the elder of the two; she had red-golden hair, which was plaited in a long pigtail, and a freckled face, blue eyes, and a delicate little mouth and nose, with a very round determined chin. She was always intensely earnest in everything that she did; untiring in schemes that would unite pleasure with usefulness—as, when she locked Purling, the old butler, into his pantry, and left him there for an hour, she told Daffy it would be so good for him to be obliged to sit still and rest, for he had told her how his legs ached going up and down stairs; and when Nurse had asked her how she could take pleasure in being so naughty, she retorted:

"If it rests Purling and pleases me, those are two good things, not naughty, that I've done!"

Daffy was very fair and fragile-looking. She had a way of dancing along on the tips of her toes, and darting here and there like a bright dragon-fly, and seemed to grown-up people as if she tried just to keep out of their reach. She had a little pale face and soft flaxen hair. Her eyes were brown, with heavy fringed lashes. She was rarely unhappy, and treated most things that happened to her in a very calm unruffled way. Freda was hot-tempered, but nothing upset Daffy's sweetness of outlook. She was always ready to follow Freda's lead.

The children had only just come to live in their father's big country house, which had been let for some years, and they could not remember staying in it before, as they were quite tiny children when they had done so. Their home was in London. Their father had been a busy politician, but now had volunteered for the War, and had gone out to Egypt in the Yeomanry. Their mother loved town and was always busy, either entertaining company in her own house or enjoying it elsewhere. The children saw very little of her.

They had all had whooping-cough, and though now quite well, the doctor advised their mother to send them into the country for the summer; and as the Hall was empty, the tenant having gone to the War, Mrs. Harrington sent them there in charge of their old nurse.

Freda and Daffy were delighted with their country home, but a lot of things about it puzzled them.

It was now about three o'clock in the afternoon. They had explored every corner in the big gardens surrounding the house. A short time before, they had wandered along a straight path in a belt of fir-wood, which had led them, after a long walk, up to a brick wall and a closed door. The door had evidently not been opened for years; ivy had grown over it. Of course they immediately wanted to know what was on the other side. The keyhole was filled with rust and dirt. With the help of a small pocket-knife Freda cleared it out, then she applied one of her blue eyes to it and uttered a low cry of ecstasy.

"Oh, Daffy, it's a garden—a lovely one! Oh, such roses! Such flowers!"

"Let me look."

But Daffy had to wait for some minutes before she had her turn at the keyhole.

"I see a white rabbit on the grass," she said. "Oh, Freda, it's an enchanted garden! Does it belong to us?"

"It ought to," said Freda, looking at the door with sadness. "This is our door, Daffy. It has no business to be locked away from us."

"But it's a long way from the house."

"That doesn't matter a bit. The lodge gate is miles away, but it belongs—"

"Shall we climb over the wall?"

Both children looked up at the old wall above them—a wall that was fully ten feet high.

"No; but we can follow the wall along till we come to another door. There must be one for people to get in and out. Come on!"

Through the fir plantation they went, keeping as close to the wall as they could, though there was a mass of briers and undergrowth for some distance along that prevented them touching it. Eventually they squeezed through some wire railings and got out into the open park. Here a grass-grown ditch was the only obstacle between them and the wall.

"What a big garden it must be inside!" sighed Daffy.

And then it was that Freda came upon the Great Discovery, and she gave a little scream as she did so. It was a little green-painted wooden door only about three feet high. It was on the other side of the ditch. In a moment both children were over the ditch trying to turn the handle, and, to their joy and delight, it turned. There was no lock or bolt, and after a little tugging and pushing they got it open.

"It's like the door in 'Alice in Wonderland!'" gasped Freda. "Oh, look, Daffy, look! There's somebody there!"

They were kneeling down now with beating hearts. Both heads were close together, and eyes taking in all that there was to be seen. A garden indeed, with a cool green lawn, and rose-covered arches, and flowers of every colour crowding each other out of the beds. In the distance, a low, grey house with striped green-and-white sun-blinds, and under a shady tree on the lawn a man in a low hammock chair. He was smoking. He had cushions under his head, and his feet were resting on a long stool; but he had an easel in front of him, and he was either painting or drawing.

"Daffy, let's crawl through! We must! We'll go and ask him who he is."

To speak was to act with Freda. She crammed her battered hat down on her head and crawled through the little door, Daffy following her. Then they stood up and advanced along the gravel path.

"This is an adventure!" whispered Daffy.

But Freda, with eager shining eyes, sped along without a word. The man was too engrossed with his occupation to look up, and it was only when Freda spoke that he turned wondering eyes upon them.

"Did you leave the door open on purpose? Did you expect us to find it one day? And will you tell us why it is so little? Is it for the fairies?"

The man had kind eyes; they saw that at once. He was no ogre or gloomy hermit. But he looked ill, and they saw that crutches were by his side.

"Ah," he said, "that's my secret, But I didn't have it made for you."

"Why is the gate locked, the proper gate belonging to us?" asked Freda.

Daffy had quietly glided round to the back of his chair.

"Oh!" she said, in her soft little voice. "What a darling little fairy girl! She's swinging from an apple-tree bough, Freda. Come and see!"

Freda stepped up closer.

"So she is! Who is she?"

"She's my Dreamikins."

"Is she a real little girl, or just a paper one?"

"She's as real as they're made. What a pity she wasn't here to see you crawling through that little door?"

"Did you see us?"

"Yes, but I pretended not to, so that I shouldn't scare you away."

"Oh, we were much too excited to go back, much!"

"Much!" echoed Daffy from behind. "We never do go back when we're finding out things."

"May we sit down and talk to you?" asked Freda; but she dropped down on the grass as she spoke. "We're simply dying to talk to somebody sensible. I s'pose you know we live the other side of your wall."

The man nodded.

"I guess that. Now we'll play the game properly. You must tell me about yourselves and I'll tell you about ourselves. Who will begin?"

"You," cried both the little girls at once.

So he began:

"My name is Fibo. That is what Dreamikins calls me, and if we're going to be friends you can call me so too."

"But you weren't christened Fibo?" said Freda.

"I was christened Augustus Arnold. Do you like that better?"

"Why does she call you Fibo?" inquired Daffy.

She had been dancing up and down lightly on her toes; now she stood still, and regarded the strange man gravely.

"Dreamikins and I have a way of naming our friends as we like; and I was Mephibosheth to her—'lame on both feet,' but we shortened it to Fibo."

Daffy's eyes were full of pity.

"Tell us more," demanded Freda.

He waved his hand behind him.

"There's my house, and it's run by Mr. and Mrs. Daw and their daughter Carrie. And Drab the cat, and Grinder the dog, and Whiskers the white rabbit are my family; and I came here ten years ago."

"But Dreamikins—isn't she your family?" asked Freda.

He shook his head.

"She has a father and mother, and a home at Brighton and another in Scotland, and this is her other home, and the one she likes best. Dreamikins' mother is my sister. Now you know all about me."

"And we'll tell you about ourselves," said Freda eagerly. "We come from London, but we don't like it very well, because Dad is in Egypt, and Mums is doing all kinds of things in London that she never used to do before the War. And we got the whooping-cough, and Mums thinks we are too pale, so we've come down here to run wild, she says; but of course Nurse stops us doing that."

"Did you ever have a nurse?" demanded Daffy suddenly.

"Didn't I! What an old dear she was too!"

"Fancy having a nurse you could call an old dear!"

Freda looked quite shocked.

"Our nurse is the most important person in the whole world. If the King and Queen were to tell her they wanted to see us, she would say:

"'Not to-day, Your Majesty. When I see fit I will let you know.'"

Daffy gave a little chuckle.

"That's Nurse's favourite saying, 'When I see fit!' She's much more proud than kings and queens are."

"Yes," Freda went on; "so, you see, Nurse has brought us down here, and Purling, and Cook, and a few of the others have come too. Mr. Fibo, what is a 'purse-proud rich'?"

"A rich person who is proud of the money in his purse."

Freda nodded.

"Of course! That ridic'lous, disgusting boy who rides the butcher's horse had an argyment with me yesterday. I was sitting on the park wall when he came by, and my legs was—were on the road side, you know. He said we were that. Why, Daffy and me have never been rich in our lives! Why, I've only sevenpence and a farthing in my purse now; and how much have you, Daffy?"

"Fourpence halfpenny," said Daffy promptly; "and a penny belongs to the missionary box—I mean it has to go there."

"Why, Mr. Fibo, he said something about our big house; but it isn't our house at all! Daffy and me live in just a bit of it. The front stairs aren't ours even! Purling says we're not to go near them. We can't slide down the banisters or tobogg on a tea-tray down the stairs. You see, it's like this. Dad and Mums are to have all the big rooms downstairs when they come, and till then they're locked up. The bedrooms along the big passage belong to the housemaids. They say they won't have us messing up their rooms. Old Purling lives in the pantry—that's his part of the house; Mrs. Stilton has all the kitchen part of the house, and her dear little sitting-room, which she keeps us out of. And Daffy and me—we just have our day-nursery and our night-nursery, and the back stairs to go up and down. We're quite poor, you see. Only two rooms to live in, and those really belong to Nurse, she says. We haven't a single bit of room our very own."

"Except the corner," said Daffy, with twinkling eyes, "and the punishment chair."

"Have you ever sat in a chair," questioned Freda, turning her eager little face towards Fibo, "which is so small in the seat and high in the legs that you can't bend your back a tiny inch or you'll fall off?"

Fibo threw back his head and laughed aloud.

"We had one in our nursery when I was a boy. It was an heirloom then. I didn't think one was in existence now."

"Nurse found it in the nursery here. She sucked her lips when she saw it. She always sucks her lips when she's pleased. And we have to sit on it for half an hour when we're punished."

"I see that you are very unhappy children," said Fibo gravely; but his eyes were smiling in spite of his grave face.

Daffy pirouetted on her toes.

"We love it here," she said, "because we can be out of doors all day finding adventures."

"Like you," put in Freda—"you and this garden and the little door."

"Please let us see your pictures," said Daffy, stealing a little nearer to the invalid's chair.

He put down his hand and took up a portfolio from the grass.

"I'll show you what I have. They're going into a book very soon."

"Do you make books?"

"No, only the pictures in them."

They hung over his chair in rapt enjoyment of all he showed them. There were fairies dancing and playing hide-and-seek amongst beautiful flowers, lying asleep under ferns and toadstools, climbing along a rainbow to get the pot of gold at the other end, and tickling children's cheeks with their tiny fingers as they lay asleep in their cots. There were dogs and cats, all going through wonderful adventures; and in nearly every picture there was a reproduction of Dreamikins. Daffy eagerly looked out for her, and when he turned over a sheet which showed her standing bareheaded with hair flying in the wind on the top of a hill, and hands stretched out upwards, Daffy exclaimed:

"I like that. Oh, I wish I had a picture like that! What is she doing?"

Fibo pointed to words printed underneath:

"I don't like earth, I want heaven!"

"Did she really say that?" asked Freda wonderingly.

"Yes, when her mother had punished her for running away."

Fibo smiled at the recollection as he spoke. Then he put the sketch into Daffy's hand.

"You can have it if you want it. This is only a copy. I have the original."

Daffy took the picture with a radiant face, then, with a quick little dart, she bent her head and kissed, as lightly as a butterfly might, the back of Fibo's right hand.

"That is my 'thank you' to the hand that did it!" she said.

Freda's gaze had wandered away from the sketches to the flowers.

"What lovely flowers you have! It looks like an enchanted garden. We have no flowers like these. Does Dreamikins pick them when she comes to stay with you?

"Yes; she knows all their histories, and which of them the fairies love best."

"Ah," said Daffy, with her cooing little laugh, "you believe in fairies! So do Freda and me, since we saw 'Peter Pan' in London, and I used to before when I was quite a baby. Nurse doesn't. She doesn't believe in any of the nice things, only in doses of medicines, and punishment, and bringing us up like 'little ladies' and 'good Christians.' I hate ladies and Freda hates good Christians, so Nurse and we argify about them."

"Oh, but I believe—heart and soul—in good Christians," said Fibo, leaning his head back and looking at Daffy with a kind smile; "what I don't believe in, are bad ones!"

"But I 'spect your good Christians are nicer than Nurse's. Why, I shouldn't wonder if you were one yourself!"

"Will Freda hate me if I am? But I can truthfully say I'm not a good one, only I have a try, and a hard try too, in that direction."

"How did you hurt your legs?" asked Freda quickly, wishing to change the conversation. "We want to know such a lot of things, and if we don't go back soon Nurse will be coming after us."

"Oh, how could she?" chuckled Daffy. "Why, I'm sure that Fibo made a little door like that on purpose to keep out nurses."

"Well now, I'll tell you about it. First about my legs. They were shot in the Boer War—that was before you were born, so, you see, I've had plenty of time to get accustomed to do without them. I came down to live here with my sister after my smash up, and then she got married and went away, and I liked my garden so much that I stayed on here."

"All alone?" said Daffy, with pity in her eyes.

"I wasn't very long alone. My sister soon brought Dreamikins to me, and she spends part of every year now with me. My sister promised me that I should share Dreamikins before she came into this world. She did not like leaving me to get married, but now she doesn't like leaving her husband to come and see me, and that's quite proper, you know. Well now, about the little door. Of course Dreamikins made me make it. She wanted to go out adventure-seeking in your park, and didn't want her nurse to come after her. So we made it nice and small."

"How lovely!" cried Freda. "But isn't it funny that Dreamikins should want to get out of this lovely garden when we want to get into it! When is she coming to see you again? Soon?"

"Not very soon."

"Then will you have us instead of her, and let us come in and out whenever we like?"

"Whenever you like," Fibo said at once.

"I'm afraid we shall have to be going," Freda said uneasily. "It will be tea-time. It always is tea-time when we want to enjoy ourselves."

"Run along, and get Nurse in a good temper, and then tell her where you've been. Everything must be above-board!"

The children said good-bye. Daffy danced backwards down the path, kissing her hand to him, then he called out:

"Pick a flower to take away with you, and give it to Nurse from me."

Freda stooped over a pink rose-bush.

"I'll pick the very biggest, and we'll make Nurse keep it on the table where we can smell it."

Daffy flitted from bed to bed, unable to make a selection. At last she picked a white Madonna lily.

Then they called out their thanks, and crept through the little green door. When they were once outside, they ran as fast as they could back to the house, and as they ran, Freda said:

"We've made a friend, Daffy,—quite a new one,—and we'll have him all the time we're here. I think it's been splendid!"

"Yes," said Daffy breathlessly; "if Nurse lets us keep him. But we can tell her that he's a grown-up, and won't lead us into mischief. And he's a cripple, and I believe Nurse's sister's husband's cousin is a cripple, so she ought to feel sorry."

A maid was ringing the big tea-bell out of the nursery window. They panted up the stairs, and Nurse met them at the nursery door.

"Where have you been all this time? Jane, make them tidy for tea at once. Master Bertie is ready."

She was fat and comfortable looking. In sickness or trouble, Nurse's lap was a perfect haven; but she had old-fashioned ideas of training children, and her training was Spartan-like in its severity.

Freda and Daffy were soon back in the nursery. It was a pleasant-looking room when the sun shone in at the windows. It was large and square, with dark oak-panelled walls and a low ceiling. Three windows looked into the park, and they had a view of the little village beyond clustering round an old square-towered church. Nurse was sitting in her big chair behind the tea-tray. The table was round. Bertie was in his high chair next Nurse. Freda and Daffy slipped into their chairs, then both held out their flowers to Nurse. Their faces were anxious as they did it. So much depended upon how she received their news!