"I'm trying to guess how old you are. And I thought you were a boy, too. I'm glad you're not."
"I'm 'most fourteen." Miss Jerry squared her shoulders proudly. "I guess I do look like a boy. I wear this sort of clothes most of the time, 'cept when I dress up or go to school. You see I've always gone with Little-Dad on Silverheels when he went to see sick people until I grew too heavy and--and Silverheels got too old." She said it with deep regret. "But I live--like this!"
"And do you wander alone all over the mountain?"
"Oh, no--just on this side of Kettle. Once a guide and a man from the Wayside disappeared there beyond Sleepy Hollow and that's why they call it Devil's Hole. Little-Dad made me promise never to go beyond the turn from Sunrise trail. I'd like to, too. But there are lots of jolly tramps this side. This"--waving her hand--"is the Witches' Glade and that"--nodding at the rock against which the man leaned--"is the Wishing-rock."
John Westley, who back home manufactured cement-mixers, suddenly felt that he had wakened into a world of make-believe.
He turned and looked at the rock--it was very much like a great many other rocks all over the mountainside and yet--there _was_ something different!
Jerry giggled and clasped her very brown hands around her leather-clad knees.
"I name everything on this side--no one from Wayside ever comes this way, you see. I've played here since I was ever so little. I've always pretended that fairies lived in the mountains." She leveled serious eyes upon him. "They _must_! You know it's _magic_ the way things--_are_--here!"
John Westley nodded. "I understand--you climb and you think you're on top and then there's lots higher up and you slide down and you think you're in the valley and you come out on a spot--like this--with all the world below you still."
"Mustn't it have been _fun_ to make it all?" Jerry's eyes gleamed. "And such beautiful things grow everywhere and the colors are _so_ different! And the woodsy glens and ravines--they're so mysterious. I've heard the trees talk! And the brooks--why, they _can't_ be just nothing but brooks, they're so--so--_alive_!"
"Oh, yes," John Westley was plainly convinced. "Fairies _must_ live in the mountains!"