at night like a good sun as
it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse. Yet
I daresay you believe all that about the earth and the sun, and if so
you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and Cyril and
the others had been a week in the country they had found a fairy. At
least they called it that, because that was what it called itself; and
of course it knew best, but it was not at all like any fairy you ever
saw or heard of or read about.

It was at the gravel-pits. Father had to go away suddenly on business,
and mother had gone away to stay with Granny, who was not very well.
They both went in a great hurry, and when they were gone the house
seemed dreadfully quiet and empty, and the children wandered from one
room to another and looked at the bits of paper and string on the floors
left over from the packing, and not yet cleared up, and wished they had
something to do. It was Cyril who said--

"I say, let's take our spades and dig in the gravel-pits. We can pretend
it's seaside."

"Father says it was once," Anthea said; "he says there are shells there
thousands of years old."

So they went. Of course they had been to the edge of the gravel-pit and
looked over, but they had not gone down into it for fear father should
say they mustn't play there, and it was the same with the chalk-quarry.
The gravel-pit is not really dangerous if you don't try to climb down
the edges, but go the slow safe way round by the road, as if you were a
cart.

Each of the children carried its own spade, and took it in turns to
carry the Lamb. He was the baby, and they called him that because "Baa"
was the first thing he ever said. They called Anthea "Panther," which
seems silly when you read it, but when you say it it sounds a little
like her name.

The gravel-pit is very large and wide, with grass growing round the
edges at the top, and dry stringy wildflowers, purple and yellow. It is
like a giant's washbowl. And there are mounds of gravel, and holes in
the sides of the bowl where gravel has been taken out, and high up in
the steep sides there are the little holes that are the little front
doors of the little bank-martins' little houses.

The children built a castle, of course, but castle-building is rather
poor fun when you have no hope of the swishing tide ever coming in to
fill up the moat and wash away the drawbridge, and, at the happy last,
to wet everybody up to the waist at least.

Cyri