"Yet," said the fairy lady, for that this she was the little girl began to feel sure, "yet, Merran, your idea is right. I am the same, and this place where you are standing is what you have called the 'rain-house.' Look about you--this is only the entrance--and then I will take you inside and you shall see my husband, who will welcome you as I do. We have expected you for a long time, but till you spoke to me in your trouble I had no power to bid you come." Then Merran turned and gazed around her, and strange as it had seemed at first, she began to recognise the roughened walls, the branches wreathed round the porch with its two open doorways, even the flooring on which she stood, painted to look like tiles. "Yes," she exclaimed, "it _is_ like the rain-house, as much as I could see of it. But--" and then for the first time a new perplexity struck her, "if it really is it," she asked, "how can I be in it? How can I be littler even than you? Why I could have held you in my hand when I was down in the garret, if I could have got you? Have you grown big, or have I grown tiny?" The Sunshine fairy--we can call her by her name now--laughed, and oh how pretty her laugh was! "My dear Merran," she said, "it doesn't matter. Perhaps, however, it is less confusing for you to think you have grown tiny. But I needn't puzzle you if you understand that to all intents and purposes you are in fairyland--as much there as it is well for a mortal child to be. Your old rain-house is one of its entrances. Come now, and you shall see more." She opened a door in the back of the hut--or what seemed the back--and led Merran through. The little girl gave a cry of pleasure. They were standing in the prettiest room you could imagine. It was all brightness and cosiness, the chairs and tables of white wood, the carpet like green moss, the walls hung with soft pink silk, and above all the "window-doors," as Merran called them to herself, opened on to--surely the loveliest garden that ever was seen, "out of fairyland" I was going to say, forgetting that it was, if not fairyland itself, just at the entrance to it. It did not seem a very large garden, or rather one could not quite tell how far it extended, for at the farther end it sloped down rather suddenly and beyond, a great thicket of beautiful trees and bushes gave a misty, vague appearance, through which Merran only caught sight of gleams of sky and sunshine--almost, she fancied, of blue hills far in the distance. "That must be the real fairyland," she thought. But she did not feel much curiosity about it; the pretty room and lovely garden were too full of delight. And as she gazed, another object attracted her. This was a fountain in the centre of one of the velvety lawns. She had never seen a fountain before, but she was a clever child in her own way, and she remembered pictures which she had seen, of which the dancing silvery drops reminded her. "Is that a--a waterfall?" she asked.