Tell Me a Story

by Mrs. Molesworth

that was on fine days of course. On foggy and rainydays there were grand sights to be seen too. First one mountain andthen another would put on a nightcap of great heavy clouds, andsometimes the night-caps would grow down all over them till they werequite hidden; and then all of a sudden they would rise off again slowly,hit by bit, till Con could see first up to the mountain's waist, thenup, up, up to the very top again. That was another kind of bo-peep.

  Summer and winter, fine or wet, cold or hot, Con used to go to schoolevery day. He was only seven years old, and there was a good way towalk, more than a mile; but it was very seldom, very, _very_ seldom,that he missed going. There were reasons why it was best for him to go;his father and mother knew them, and he was too good not to do what theytold him, whether he liked it or not. But he was like the horse thatone man led to the water, but twenty couldn't make drink. There was nodifficulty in making Con go to school; but as for getting him to learnonce he was there--ah, no! that was a different matter. So I fear Icannot say that he was much of a favourite with his teachers. You seethey didn't know that his little head was so full of fairies that itreally had no room for anything else, and it was only natural that theyshould think him inattentive and even stupid, and their thinking so didnot make Con like his lessons any better. And with his playmates he wasnot a favourite either. He never quarrelled with them, but he did notseem to care about their games, and they laughed at him, and called hima muff. It was a pity, for I believe it was partly to make him playwith other boys that his father and mother sent him to school; and forsome things the boys couldn't help liking him. He was so good-natured,and, for such a little fellow, so brave. He could climb trees like asquirrel, and he was never afraid of anything. Many and many a shortwinter's afternoon it was dark before Con left school to come home, buthe did not mind at all. He would sling his satchel of books across hisshoulders, and trudge manfully home--thinking--thinking. By this time Idaresay you can guess of what he was thinking.

  There were two ways by which he could come home from school--there wasthe road, really not better than a lane, and when he came that way yousee he had to do all his climbing at the end, for the road was prettylevel, winding along round the foot of the mountain, perched on the sideof which was Con's home; and there was what was called the hill road,which ran up the mountain behind the village, and then went bobbing upand down along the mountain side still gradually ascending, away, away,I don't know where to--up to some lonely shepherds' huts I daresay,where nobody but the shepherds and the sheep ever went. But on its wayit passed not very far from Con's home. I need hardly say that the hillroad was the boy's favourite way. He liked it because it was more"climby," and for another reason too. By this way, he passed thecottage of an old woman named Nance, of whom he was extremely fond, andto whom he would always stop to speak if he possibly could.

  I don't know that many boys and girls would have taken a fancy to Nance.She was certainly not pretty, and what is more she was decidedly_queer_. She was very very small, indeed the smallest person I everheard of, I think. When Con stood beside her, though he was only seven,he really looked bigger than she did, and she was so funnily dressedtoo. She always wore green, quite a bright green, and her dresses neverseemed to get dull or soiled though she had all her housework to do forherself, and she had over her green dress a long brown cloak with ahood, which she generally pulled over her face to shield her eyes fromthe sun, she said. Her face was very small and brown and puckered-uplooking, but she had bright red cheeks, and _very_ bright dark eyes.She was never seen either to laugh or cry; but she used to smilesometimes, and her smile was rather nice.

  The neighbours--they were hardly to be called _her_ neighbours, for herhouse was quite half-a-mile from any other--all called her "uncanny," orwhatever word they used to mean that, and they all said they did notknow anything of her history, where she had come from, or anything abouther. And once when Con repeated to her some remarks of this kind whichhe had heard at school, Nance only smiled and said, "no doubt the peopleof Creendale"--that was the name of the village--"were very wise."

  "But _have_ you always lived here, Nance?" asked Con.

  "No, Connemara," she answered gravely, "not always."

  But that was all she said, and somehow Con did not care to ask her more.

  It was not often he asked her questions; he was not that sort of boy forone thing, and besides, there was something about her that forbade it.He used to sit at one side of the cottage fire, or, in summer, on theturf seat just outside the door, watching Nance's tiny figure as sheflitted about, or sometimes just staring up at the sky, or into the firewithout speaking. Nance never seemed to mind what he did, and he in noway doubted that she was glad to see him, though by words she had neversaid so. When he did speak it was always about one thing--what, you canguess, it was always about fairies. It was through this that he hadfirst made friends with Nance. She had found him peering into thehollow trunk of an old solitary oak-tree that stood farther down thehill, not very far from her dwelling.

  "What are you doing there, Connemara?" she said.

  "I was thinking this might be one of the doors into fairyland," heanswered quietly, without seeming surprised at her knowing his name.

  "And what should you know about that place?" she said again.

  And Con turned towards her his earnest blue eyes, and told her all histhoughts and fancies. It seemed easier to him to tell Nance about themthan it had ever seemed to tell any one else--his feelings seemed to putthemselves into words, as if Nance drew them out.

  Nance said very little, but she smiled. And after that Con used to stopat her cottage nearly every day on his way home--he dared not on his way_to_ school, for fear of being late, for almost the only thing he alwaysdid get was good marks for punctuality. His people at home did not knowmuch about Nance. He told his mother about her once, and asked if hemight stay to speak to her; and when his mother heard that Nance'scottage was very clean, she said, "Yes, she didn't mind," and, afterthat, Con somehow never mentioned her again. He came to have graduallya sort of misty notion that Nance had had something to do with him eversince he was born. She seemed to know everything about him. From thevery first she called him by his proper name--not Con or Master Con, butConnemara, and he liked to hear her say it.

  One winter afternoon, it was nearly dark though it was only half-pastthree, Con coming home from school (the master let them out earlier onthe very short days), stopped as usual at Nance's cottage. It was very,_very_ cold, the fierce north wind came swirling down from themountains, round and round, here, there, and everywhere, till, but forthe unmistakable "freeze" in its breath, you would hardly have knownwhence it blew.

  "It is so cold, Nance," said the boy, as he settled himself by the fire.Nance's fires always burnt so bright and clear.

  "Yes," said Nance, "the snow is coming, Connemara."

  "I don't care," said Con, shaking his shaggy fair hair out of his eyes,for the heat was melting the icicles upon it. "I'm not going to hurry.Father and mother are away for two days, so there's no one to miss me.Mayn't I stay, Nance?"

  Nance did not answer. She went to the door and looked out, and Conthought he heard her whisper something to herself. Immediately a blastof wind came rushing down the hill, into the very room it seemed to Con.Nance closed the door. "Not long; the storm is coming," she saidagain, in answer to his question.

  But in the meantime Con made himself very comfortable by the fire,amusing himself as usual by staring into its glowing depths.

  "Nance," he said at last, "do you know what the boys at school say?They say they wonder I'm not afraid of you! They say you're a witch,Nance!"

  He looked up in her face brightly with his fearless blue eyes, andlaughed so merrily that all the corners of the queer little cottageseemed to echo it back. Nance, however, only smiled.

  "If you _were_ a witch, Nance, I'd make you grant me some wishes, threeanyway," he went on. "Of course you know what the first would be, and,indeed, if I h
ad that, I don't know that I would want any other. Imean, to go to fairyland, you know."

  Nance nodded her head.

  "The other two would be for it to be always summer, and for me never,never, _never_ to have any lessons to learn," he continued.

  "Never to grow a man?" said Nance.

  "I don't know," answered Con. "_Lessons_ don't make boys grow; butstill I suppose they _have_ to have them sometime before they are men.But I shouldn't care if I could go to fairyland, and if it would bealways summer; I don't think I _would_ care about ever being a man."

  As he said these words the fire suddenly sent out a sputtering blaze.It jumped up all at once with such a sort of