But Aria was fast asleep, her face looking so peaceful in the moonlight
that Linde was too unselfish to wish to disturb her, for of late she
knew well that the elder girl's waking hours were full of anxiety.
"I must wait till the morning," thought the child, and turning round she
herself was soon in a dreamless slumber.
The next day Aria listened with great interest to Linde's story.
"It is queer," she agreed. "It almost sounds like a message from
mother's uncanny godmother."
"Don't call her 'uncanny,'" Linde objected. "It's rather a frightening
sort of word, and she mightn't like it. Supposing," she went on,
lowering her voice, "_supposing_ she really was a fairy, or partly one,
she may be back in fairyland for all we know, and some day we might see
her."
But Aria shook her head.
"No," she said, "she very likely had dealings with the fairies, but that
isn't the same as being one herself."
"I'll keep a good look-out for her, nevertheless, at the market to-day,"
Linde replied.
And so she did. But no one at all resembling the quaint figure in her
dream was to be seen, and after a while Linde forgot about her, so busy
were the sisters that morning in selling their wares.
The first of their usual customers, a kindly, well-to-do, housewifely
woman, who had known their father and always came to them for flowers,
was at once attracted by the delicious perfume of the dried leaves.
"Dear, dear," she exclaimed, "it's not often that late autumn flowers
are so fragrant. Your posies are always fresh and sweet, but I've never
known their scent so beautiful," and she sniffed with satisfaction,
looking about to discover from which of the flowers it came.
"It's not the flowers," explained Aria to the good dame. "It's something
new we have for sale to-day. I only hope that you and our other
customers may take a fancy to it," and she went on to tell of the
pleasant qualities of the dried rose-leaves--how their scent, if they
were laid among linen, was both fresher and more delicate to begin with,
and lasted much longer than that of the finest lavender. But she said
nothing of the sort of mystery connected with the powder; some instinct
prevented her doing so. Nor did she tell that but a little of it
remained, or that their stock of rose-leaves would soon be exhausted.
"Who knows what may happen before that?" she reflected, and the words of
Linde's dream-visitor recurred to her, "Three times, and then ask the
robin."
Dame Barbara was quite satisfied and greatly delighted.
"Here," she said, fumbling for her substantial purse, "a groat for two
ounces of it, did you say? No, a half-groat only? My dear, you'll have
to raise your prices if the perfume is so excellent! Well to begin with,
give me the four ounces straight away, and here's a half-groat over and
above what it all comes to--dried leaves and fresh ones and flowers, all
together--just the tiny silver piece for luck, you know."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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