altogether fascinating to be expected to rush about playing
Blind-Man's Buff, and Puss-in-the-Corner, and Charades, and Telegrams,
and all those games which schoolgirls love.

The sound from the Vivians' bedroom was very hilarious for the next
three-quarters of an hour; but presently Margaret came forward and asked
all the girls if they would seat themselves, as Betty was going to tell
stories.

"With the lights down! Oh, please, please, don't forget that! All the
lights down except one," said Susie Rushworth.

"Yes, with all the lights down except one," said Margaret. "Betty, will
you come and sit here? We will cluster round in a semi-circle. We shall
be in shadow, but there must be sufficient light for us to see your
face."

The lights were arranged to produce this effect. There was now only one
light in the room, and that streamed over Betty as she sat cross-legged
on the floor, her customary attitude when she was thoroughly at home and
excited. There was not a scrap of self-consciousness about Betty at
these moments. She had been working herself up all day for the time when
she might pour out her heart. At home she used to do so for the benefit
of Donald and Jean Macfarlane and of her little sisters. But, up to the
present, no one at school had heard of Betty's wild stories. At last,
however, an opportunity had come. She forgot all her pain in the
exercise of her strong faculty for narrative.

"I see something," she began. She had rather a thrilling voice--not
high, but very clear, and with a sweet ring in it. "I see," she
continued, looking straight before her as she spoke, "a great, great, a
very great plain. And it is night, or nearly so--I mean it is dusk; for
there is never actual night in my Scotland in the middle of summer. I
see the great plain, and a girl sitting in the middle of it, and the
heather is beginning to come out. It has been asleep all the winter; but
it is coming out now, and the air is full of music. For, of course, you
all understand," she continued--bending forward so that her eyes shone,
growing very large, and at the same moment black and bright--"you all
know that the great heather-plants are the last homes left in England
for the fairies. The fairies live in the heather-bells; and during the
winter, when the heather is dead, the poor fairies are cold, being
turned out of their homes."

"Where do they go, then, I wonder?" asked a muffled voice in the
darkened circle of listeners.