Cousin Jimmy’s method of looking after her was to take her to a restaurant down street and fill her up with ice-cream. Emily had never had many chances at ice-cream and she needed no urging, even with lack of appetite, to eat two saucerfuls. Cousin Jimmy eyed her with satisfaction.
“No use my getting anything for you that Elizabeth could see,” he said. “But she can’t see what is inside of you. Make the most of your chance, for goodness alone knows when you’ll get any more.”
“Do you never have ice-cream at New Moon?”
Cousin Jimmy shook his head.
“Your Aunt Elizabeth doesn’t like new-fangled things. In the house, we belong to fifty years ago, but on the farm she has to give way. In the house—candles; in the dairy, her grandmother’s big pans to set the milk in. But, pussy, New Moon is a pretty good place after all. You’ll like it some day.”
“Are there any fairies there?” asked Emily, wistfully.
“The woods are full of ’em,” said Cousin Jimmy. “And so are the columbines in the old orchard. We grow columbines there on purpose for the fairies.”
Emily sighed. Since she was eight she had known there were no fairies anywhere nowadays; yet she hadn’t quite given up the hope that one or two might linger in old-fashioned, out-of-the-way spots. And where so likely as at New Moon?
“Really-truly fairies?” she questioned.
“Why, you know, if a fairy was really-truly it wouldn’t be a fairy,” said Uncle Jimmy seriously. “Could it, now?”
Before Emily could think this out the aunts returned and soon they were all on the road again. It was sunset when they came to Blair Water—a rosy sunset that flooded the long, sandy sea-coast with colour and brought red road and fir-darkened hill out in fleeting clearness of outline. Emily looked about her on her new environ-
