Chapter VII: Secrets

"What makes you ask that question, Una?" said her father. "When we have lived in other countries you have never asked to have little boys and girls to play with, or worried about why you may not go and see people and go to church; and here you have Norah and Tom and Dan to play with. Surely that is enough?"

"But I didn't know before that little boys and girls _did_ play with each other," said Una--"at least, when I saw other little boys and girls playing with each other I thought they were brothers and sisters, or cousins, and, of course, I haven't got any brothers or sisters or cousins of my very own; but now that I know what little boys and girls do, I _do_ want to go to church and go to tea with them in their houses, and do things like them. _Please_, father, let me!" And Una clasped her hands coaxingly as she thought of the dear old lady and gentleman she had been to tea with, that afternoon.

The flower-filled garden, the yellow honeycomb, the gold-fish and the black puppy--and the cockatoo the old gentleman had promised to show her the next time she came--all floated through her brain as she waited for her father's answer. But Monsieur Gen shook his head.

"No, dear," he said.

To himself he was thinking that perhaps he had been foolish to allow Una to be friends with the vicar's children at all; he might have known that it would make her restless, and dissatisfied with the quiet life she had been quite content to live before.

Then he roused himself and looked down kindly at his little girl.

"Are you very disappointed? Poor little Una!" he said, putting his arm round her and drawing her to his side. "Don't look so sad, and I will try and explain to you why it is that you have never had little friends and companions of your own age."

Una looked at him, still gravely, but with the light of a growing interest in her eyes. Then she fetched a little stool and sat down at her father's feet.

"You must know, Una dear," said her father, smiling rather sadly, as he looked down at her, "that each one of us has some kind of work to do in the world. We may do it badly or we may do it well, or we may not even try to do it at all, but each one of us _ought_ to try to do something to help our fellow-men. Do you understand, little one?"

Una nodded.

"Yes, father; I quite understand," she said.

It was not often that her father talked in this way--it was rather like listening to the vicar's sermon the only Sunday she had ever been to church, she thought, as she leant her head against her father's knee; and Monsieur Gen went on speaking:

"Well, dear, sometimes people can help each other to do their bits of work in the world, and sometimes, too, they can spoil other people's work; and there are some people who are trying very hard to spoil the work which I am doing."

Una sprang to her feet.

"Father! How dare they?" she said indignantly. "Horrid people, . . . I hate them!"

Her father reached out his hand and drew her to him.

"But as long as they cannot find out exactly what I _am_ doing," he said, "or how I am doing it, they cannot really spoil my work; and that is why I have never made friends with people in any of the different places where we have stayed, in case the people who want to spoil my work should try and find out through these new friends who I am, and what I am doing. And that is why I want you, my little Una, to help me to keep my work as secret as possible."

"Oh, father, I will, I will!" cried Una. "Only--only I don't quite see how I can let out a secret if I don't exactly know what it is."

"I cannot tell you all the secret, little Una," said her father--"at least not until you are older and can understand more about it. But if I were to let you make friends and go about wherever you like people would begin to wonder where you came from, and who you were, and to ask you questions about me and what I did; and although not really knowing my secret, you might let out little bits of it, until people began to wonder and talk about you and me. One can never be too careful," he added, half to himself.

"Yes, I understand, father," said Una gravely; and she sat at her father's feet, looking into the fire and not talking much, until the little clock on the mantelpiece struck seven, and Marie came to tell her that it was bedtime.

"I wonder whether I was wise in telling her so much," Monsieur Gen thought to himself, when his little daughter had gone. "But it seemed the only thing to be done, and she is prudent beyond her years, poor little, lonely girl. I do not think she will chatter about anything I have told her."

For some time after this Una was rather quiet and sad, more like what she had been when Norah and Dan first got to know her, and not nearly so ready to laugh and play as she had been of late.

The secret her father had told her weighed heavily on the little girl's mind--she was so afraid that she might have let out to her little friends, though unknowingly, something about her father's work, and she was careful now not to say anything which might lead them to ask questions about him.

One afternoon she was walking by herself in the wood, when she came across Tom seated on the ground with a number of paper bags and packages strewn around him.

"Hullo, Una, what are you doing?" he said, glancing rather guiltily at the parcels, as if he hoped Una would not ask what was in them.

"I came to see if I could find any flowers," answered the little girl. "Marie has a headache this afternoon, and she said I might go in the wood just a little way by myself, because I am so tired of being in the garden."

"I'll show you where you can get some honeysuckle in a minute," said Tom; "it's just out now, and I know where there are some wild forget-me-nots growing all round a pool, a little way from here."

He got up and began to collect some of the paper packages into his arms; then he looked at Una.

"I say, I wonder if you'd help me to carry some of these?" he said. "I kept dropping them coming along, and the marmalade jar has got cracked--it's all dripping through the paper; and the apples keep rolling all over the place," making a sudden dive after a large red apple as he spoke, and dropping half the other parcels in his efforts to catch it.

"I will, if it's not farther than the wood," said Una. "I mayn't go in the road by myself, you know."

"You wouldn't be by yourself, you'd have me," said Tom. "But, anyway, I'm not going outside the wood--at least, only just on to the common, and you needn't come so far as that. I say, Una, shall I tell you a secret?"

Una threw out her hands in the funny little foreign way which was natural to her, and which always made the little Carews laugh.

"Oh, no, no!" she cried. "Not a secret! _Please_, Tom, don't tell me one."