This was Mousie putting her lips in that particular way she has, and running her little eyebrows up. And this was not a conversation of one evening, it was a conversation of a hundred rush-light vigils, the burden of a hundred corner-talks. And to run from one end of a hay-field to another was a joy, and to look at the wide world from the window of the family coach, was an enchantment. One day, as they were walking with their governess in the gardens, something unusual occurred. Mousie cut her hand badly with a sharp strand of Pampas grass, and the blood flowed so swiftly from the fingers that the governess became alarmed. Hurrying the child into the gardener’s cottage she asked for cold water and a bandage for the wound. Robin followed, distressed and silent, while the gardener’s wife eagerly fetched everything she could supply. “We must bathe it in vinegar before bandaging,” said the governess, “and if this is beyond your power to provide, my good woman, I will myself go and fetch some from the house. Lady Charlotte must take no undue exertion till the wound is properly tied.” And Mrs. Goodenough left the cottage immensely perturbed, walking past the good gardener’s wife in the doorway, as if no such person held open the door. Mousie had other manners, however, and now her whole mind was centred on the actions of the kindly woman who had done all so willingly. “I’m afraid your basin is stained, I am so sorry, I didn’t know that grass cut.” “And how should you, my lady? ’tis a nasty cut surely, and as for the basin there’s no manner of harm done at all. I’m that sorry I’ve no vinegar for your ladyship, but Peter was to buy me some coming back from the fair.” “From the fair! O, what fair?” said both the children. “Why, Woodstock Fair,” said the woman; “the road has just been packed with gipsy vans and menageries, and tinkers, and droves of ponies--just packed, for the last few days! But you wouldn’t be seeing that, being never on the common roads, as a body might put it. But George and Peter are away to see the fun, and to bring us all fairings.” Smiling she went to the lintel to see if Mrs. Goodenough were returning from her quest. Mousie and Rob looked at each other, and their eyes exchanged the same thought. What longing possessed them to visit the fair; they knew well enough what it meant, for they had had a nursery maid who used to tell them; and now to think the fat lady, and the mermaid in a bottle, and the double-headed calf and the clowns, and the cocoanuts were, so to speak, at their very door. How should they get there? It was no use asking to go, for fairs were common things; only common people went to them, that is how Mrs. Goodenough would have answered the request. Yet go they must, thought Rob; and “Mousie,” he whispered, “shall we escape?”