The Fairy Rebel Read Free Page B

to bed early. He sat on the edge of her bed, and they talked and talked and talked. Charlie didn’t want to hear any more about the fairy, but he did want to talk about the baby, and what they would call it, and where it would sleep, and what they would buy for it, and where they would send it to school, and all sorts of other things that there was no real need to think about for ages.
    And it wasn’t for a couple of hours that he remembered that Jan had been worried at supper.
    “I’ve forgotten what you were worried about,” he said, just when they were going to sleep.
    “Blue hair,” said Jan drowsily.
    “BLUE HAIR!” shouted Charlie, bouncing up in bed. “What are you talking about?”
    “The fairy said something about blue hair. I told her of
course
I hadn’t said blue hair, or even blue eyes;I want the baby to have hazel eyes, like yours. But what I keep thinking is, wouldn’t it be awful if she’d got it wrong, and the baby had blue hair, or even browny-green?”
    Charlie switched on the light and looked at Jan. He could see she was serious. There was a long silence.
    “Not that I believe in her,” he said, “but surely a fairy couldn’t make a mistake like that.”
    “She could,” said Jan. “Fairies have all sorts of hair colors.
Her
hair is pink.”
    “But wouldn’t a fairy notice that human beings don’t have pink and green and blue hair?” said Charlie.
    “A lot of young humans do, nowadays,” said Jan. “I mean, they dye it funny colors. Anyway she’s only a very young fairy. She could easily make a mistake.”
    “If she’s
that
young, I don’t see how she could know enough magic to give us any baby at all,” muttered Charlie. He turned out the light and lay down. But he couldn’t sleep and neither could Jan.

4
Snow on a Red Rose
    After that, Jan went out into the garden every day and sat for as long as she could under the pear tree. Mild days and frosty days, rain and shine, she went out to give the fairy a chance to meet her. She always hoped she would see the fairy, and when she didn’t, she would come back disappointed and worried. She felt more and more sure something was wrong.
    Charlie didn’t know that she was doing this every day. He would have been cross if he had, because he had told her to keep warm. And he was right. One day Jan sat outdoors too long in a cold winter wind and caught a very bad cold.
    Charlie put her to bed and stayed away from work to look after her.
    “Charlie,” croaked Jan in her cold-y voice, “do me a favor. Push my bed up against the window so I can look out.”
    Charlie was worried about drafts but he did as she asked. She propped herself up on lots of pillows and spent the day staring out into the bleak and leaflessgarden. She didn’t feel like eating. Charlie kept popping in to chat with her, but it didn’t help.
    At night he wanted to move the bed back to its usual place, but Jan wouldn’t let him.
    “Can we have the window open?” she begged.
    “Certainly not,” said Charlie firmly. “It’s freezing hard outside.”
    The next morning Jan woke up early. There was a strange grayish light in the room. She sat up quickly and looked out of the window.
    “Oh, Charlie, look!” she cried. “Snow! How beautiful! I’d love to go out and play in it,” she added.
    “Well, I’m afraid you can’t,” said Charlie sensibly.
    When he brought her breakfast, he found her crying.
    “What is it, darling? Is your cold worse?” he asked.
    “I want to go out in the snow,” she sobbed. “I
need
to! Please, Charlie, I’ll wrap up very well. My cold is gone—honestly it is!”
    Charlie took her temperature and looked at her throat and at last agreed that if she put on two blouses, and two sweaters and warm trousers and fur boots and the thickest scarf and gloves and woolly hat she owned, she might go into the garden for a very few minutes.
    At once Jan felt her sadness and sickness leave her. She jumped out of bed and got dressed in all