Читать книгу The Fairy Latchkey онлайн

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“Miss Philomène,” said Nurse, “I wish you would go out into the garden, like a dear good child. Only look at the fine weather, and it isn’t as if you were writing anything for Miss Mills neither.” So Philomène rose reluctantly, after having first written “To be con” at the end of the page, for she had not as yet made up her mind whether the story was “to be continued” or “concluded in our next.” Then she fetched her garden hat, and went to fill her watering-can at the pump.

It was still and sunny in the open, and the hum of insects sounded louder than the hum of traffic. In the lilac bush a blackbird was practising his grace-notes, so as to be in good voice for the many concerts of the on-coming season, and a warm west wind passed through the garden in long, happy sighs, as though the young summer were drawing its first deep breaths of lazy contentment. Philomène began watering and weeding her garden, and from time to time she looked up at the key-hole in the wall.

“If one is just ordinary oneself,” she said half aloud, “and lives in an ordinary house, I expect fairy things simply can’t happen. Some day, though, I must write a book about them, as if they really had happened; I suppose that is the next best thing.”