ort days ago things
had seemed likely to go on for ever in the same uneventful way, except
that they were going to be made dreary for a time by the absence of the
father she adored; and now, just through the coming of an old lady, whom
she had been prepared to hate, this amazing change in her future was
going to take place. To an imaginative little person like Barbara, it
was useless to pretend that there was nothing out of the ordinary in
this. She had lived for years in a fairy world of her own, where Kit
was a fairy prince and her father a nice old magician, and where numbers
of charming princesses, the schoolgirls of her imagination, were ready
to sympathise with her whenever the boys had been teasing her more than
usual. It was surely to this kingdom of her fancy that a fairy godmother,
who had once been a dragon, properly belonged; and all through that week,
Barbara wandered in her imaginary kingdom with this new inhabitant of it,
pointing out all its beauties to her, and even assuring her that the
magician would cure her rheumatism if she were to ask him nicely. 'Only,
you must not make her back _quite_ straight,' she whispered privately to
the magician, 'because she wouldn't be a proper fairy godmother if her
back were straight!' She also added strict injunctions to the keeper of
her gates, that a certain grown-up cousin, who might be known by her
tiresome way of smiling at people, was not to be admitted under any
circumstances into her fairy kingdom. 'It would never do,' thought
Barbara, seriously, 'to have any one in my kingdom who wanted to laugh at
me.'

Meanwhile, the busy preparations went on around her. It was not an easy
thing to move a family of six from the home in which they had passed the
whole of their lives, especially when their aunt, in the large manner
which characterised everything she did, insisted on allowing them to pack
whatever they wished.

'We are only young once,' she represented to a distracted housekeeper,
'and possessions are very precious when we are young. Let them bring
everything that will help to make the place seem like home to them; there
is plenty of room at Crofts. Get tired of the things? Of course they will!
We can't expect them to be wiser than the grown-ups, can we?'

So Wilfred packed explosive liquids in bottles, and Peter packed cricket
stumps and hockey clubs, and Christopher found room among Egbert's
collars and ties to stow away microscope-slides and setting-boar