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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Primrose Ring, by Ruth Sawyer
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Primrose Ring
+
+
+Author: Ruth Sawyer
+
+Release Date: March 27, 2005  [eBook #15482]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRIMROSE RING***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+THE PRIMROSE RING
+
+by
+
+RUTH SAWYER
+
+Illustrated
+
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+New York & London
+
+1915
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  To
+
+  The Little Mother
+  this book in memory of the
+  Primrose Ring
+  she wove for me once on a time
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+DEAR PEOPLE,--Whoever you are and wherever you may be when you take up
+this book--I beg of you not to feel disturbed because I have let Fancy
+and a faery or two slip in between the covers.  You will find them
+quite harmless and friendly--and very eager to become acquainted.
+
+Furthermore, please do not search about for Saint Margaret's; it does
+not exist.  I shamelessly confess to the building of it myself, using
+my right of authorship to bring a stone from this place, and a cornice
+from that, to cap the foundation I discovered long ago--when I was a
+child.  In a like manner have I furnished its board of trustees.  Do
+not misjudge them; remember that when one is so careless as to let
+Fancy and faeries into a book she is forced to let the stepmothers be
+unkind and the giants cruel.
+
+I should like to remind those who may be forgetting that Tir-na-n'Og is
+the land of eternal youth and joyousness--the Celtic "Land of Heart's
+Desire."  It is a country which belongs to us all by right of natural
+heritage; but we turned our backs to it and started journeying from it
+almost the instant we stepped out of our cradles.
+
+As for the primrose ring--reach across it to Bridget and let her give
+you back again the heart of a child which you may have lost somewhere
+along the road of Growing-Old-and-Wise.
+
+    R. S.
+
+THE PRIMROSE RING
+
+
+I
+
+CONCERNING FANCY AND SAINT MARGARET'S
+
+Would it ever have happened at all if Trustee Day had not fallen on the
+30th of April--which is May Eve, as everybody knows?
+
+This is something you must ask of those wiser than I, for I am only the
+story-teller, sitting in the shadow of the market-place, passing on the
+tale that comes to my ears.  But I can remind you that May Eve is one
+of the most bewitched and bewitching times of the whole year--reason
+enough to account for any number of strange happenings; and I can point
+out to your notice that Margaret MacLean, in charge of Ward C at Saint
+Margaret's, found the flower-seller at the corner of the street that
+morning with his basket full of primroses.  Now primroses are "gentle
+flowers," as everybody ought to know--which means that the faeries have
+been using them for thousands of years to work magic; and Margaret
+MacLean bought the full of her hands that morning.
+
+And this brings us back to Trustee Day at Saint Margaret's--which fell
+on the 30th of April--and to the beginning of the story.
+
+
+Saint Margaret's Free Hospital for Children does not belong to the
+city.  It was built by a rich man as a memorial to his son, a little
+crippled lad who stayed just long enough to leave behind as a legacy
+for his father a great crying hunger to minister to all little ailing
+and crippled bodies.  There are golden tales concerning those first
+years of the hospital--tales passed on by word of mouth alone and so
+old as to have gathered a bit of the misty glow of illusion that hangs
+over all myths and traditions.  They made of Saint Margaret's an
+arcadian refuge, where the Founder wandered all day and every day like
+a patron saint.  Tradition endowed him with all the attributes of all
+saints belonging to childhood: the protectiveness of Saint Christopher,
+the tenderness of Saint Anthony, the loving comradeship of Saint
+Valentine, and the joyfulness of Saint Nicholas.
+
+But that was more than fifty years ago; and institutions can change
+marvelously in half a century.  Time had buried more than the Founder.
+
+The rich still support Saint Margaret's.  Society gives bazars and
+costumed balls for it annually; great artists give benefit concerts;
+bankers, corporation presidents, and heiresses send liberal checks once
+a year--and from this last group are chosen the trustees.  They have
+made of Saint Margaret's the best-appointed hospital in the city.  It
+is supplied with everything money and power can obtain; leading
+surgeons are listed on its staff; its nurses rank at the head.  It has
+outspanned the greatest dream of the Founder--professionally.  And
+twelve times a year--at the end of every month--the trustees hold their
+day; which means that all through the late afternoon, until the
+business meeting at five-thirty, they wander over the building.
+
+Now it is the business of institutional directors to be thorough, and
+the trustees of Saint Margaret's, previous to the 30th of April, never
+forgot their business.  They looked into corners and behind doors to
+see what had not been done; they followed the work-trails of every
+employee--from old Cassie, the scrub-woman, to the Superintendent
+herself; and if one was a wise employee one blazed conspicuously and
+often.  They gathered in little groups and discussed methods for
+conservation and greater efficiency, being as up to date in their
+charities as in everything else.  Also, they brought guests and showed
+them about; for when one was rich and had put one's money into
+collections of sick and crippled children instead of old ivories and
+first editions, it did not at all mean that one had not retained the
+same pride of exhibiting.
+
+There are a few rare natures who make collections for the sheer love of
+the objects they collect, and if they can be persuaded to show them off
+at all it is always with so much tenderness and sympathy that even the
+feelings of a delicately wrought Buddha could not be bruised.  But
+there were none of these natures numbered among the trustees of Saint
+Margaret's.  And because it was purely a matter of charity and pride
+with them, and because they never had any time left over from being
+thorough and business-like to spend on the children themselves, they
+never failed to leave a shaft of gloom behind them on Trustee Day.  The
+contagious ward always escaped by virtue of its own power of
+self-defense; but the shaft started at the door of the surgical ward
+and went widening along through the medical and the convalescent until
+it reached the incurables at an angle of indefinite radiation.  There
+was a reason for this--as Margaret MacLean put it once in paraphrase:
+
+"Children come and children go, but we stay on for ever."
+
+Trustee Day was an abiding memory only with the incurables; which meant
+that twelve times a year--at the end of every month--Ward C cried
+itself to sleep.
+
+Spring could not have begun the day better.  She is never the
+spendthrift that summer is, but once in a while she plunges recklessly
+into her treasure-store and scatters it broadcast.  On this last day of
+April she was prodigal with her sunshine; out countryward she garnished
+every field and wood and hollow with her best.  Everywhere were flowers
+and pungent herby things in such abundance that even the city folk
+could sense them afar off.
+
+Little cajoling breezes scuttled around corners and down
+thoroughfares, blowing good humor in and bad humor out.  Birds of
+passage--song-sparrows, tanagers, bluebirds, and orioles--even a pair
+of cardinals--stopped wherever they could find a tree or bush from
+which to pipe a friendly greeting.  Yes, spring certainly could not
+have begun the day better; it was as if everything had said to itself,
+"We know this is a very special occasion and we must do our share in
+making it fine."
+
+So well did everything succeed that Margaret MacLean was up and out of
+Saint Margaret's a full half-hour earlier than usual, her heart singing
+antiphonally with the birds outside.  Coatless, but capped and in her
+gray uniform, she jumped the hospital steps, two at a time, and danced
+the length of the street.
+
+Now Margaret MacLean was small and slender, and there was nothing
+grotesque in the dancing.  It had become a natural means of expressing
+the abundant life and joyousness she had felt ever since she had been
+free of crutches and wheeled chairs; and an impartial stranger, had he
+been passing, would have watched her with the same uncritical delight
+that he might have bestowed on any wood creature had it suddenly
+appeared darting along the pavement.  She reached the corner just in
+time to bump into the flower-seller, who was turning about like some
+old tabby to settle himself and his basket.
+
+"Oh!" she cried in dismay, for the flower-seller was wizened and
+unsteady of foot, and she had sent him spinning about in a dizzy
+fashion.  She put out a steadying hand.  "Oh . . . !"  This time it was
+in ecstasy; she had spied the primroses in the basket just as the
+sunshine splashed over the edge of the corner building straight down
+upon them.  Margaret MacLean dropped to one knee and laid her cheek
+against them.  "The happy things--you can hear them laugh!  I want
+all--all I can carry."  She looked up quizzically at the flower-seller.
+"Now how did you ever happen to think of bringing these--to-day?"
+
+A pair of watery old eyes twinkled, thereby becoming amazingly young in
+an instant, and he wagged his head mysteriously while he raised a
+significant finger.  "Sure, wasn't I knowin', an' could I be afther
+bringin' anythin' else?  But the rest that passes--or stops--will see
+naught but yellow flowers in a basket, I'm thinkin'."  And the
+flower-seller set to shaking his head sorrowfully.
+
+"Perhaps not.  There are the children--"
+
+"Aye, the childher; but the most o' them be's gettin' too terrible
+wise."
+
+"I know--I know--but mine aren't.  I'm going to take my children back
+as many as I can carry."  She stretched both hands about a mass of
+stems--all they could compass.  "See"--she held up a giant bunch--"so
+much happiness is worth a great deal.  Feel in the pocket of my apron
+and you will find--gold for gold.  It was the only money I had in my
+purse.  Keep it all, please."  With a nod and a smile she left him,
+dancing her way back along the still deserted street.
+
+"'Tis the faeries' own day, afther all," chuckled the flower-seller as
+he eyed the tiny gold disk in his palm; then he remembered, and called
+after the diminishing figure of the nurse: "Hey, there!  Mind what ye
+do wi' them blossoms.  They be's powerful strong magic."  And he
+chuckled again.
+
+The hall-boy, shorn of uniform and dignity, was outside, polishing
+brasses, when Margaret MacLean reached the hospital door.  She stopped
+for an interchange of grins and greetings.
+
+"Mornin', Miss Peggie."
+
+"Morning, Patsy."
+
+He was "Patrick" to the rest of Saint Margaret's; no one else seemed to
+realize that he was only about one-fifth uniform and the other fifths
+were boy--small boy at that.
+
+She eyed his work critically.  "That's right--polish them well, Patsy.
+They must shine especially bright to-day."
+
+"Why, what's happenin' to-day?"
+
+"Oh--everything, and--nothing at all."
+
+And she passed on through the door with a most mysterious smile,
+thereby causing Patsy to mentally comment:
+
+"My, don't she beat all!  More'n half the time a feller don't know what
+she's kiddin' about; but, gee! don't he like it!"
+
+As it happened the primroses did not get as far as Ward C then.
+Margaret MacLean found the door of the board-room ajar, and, glancing
+in, looked square into the eyes of the Founder of Saint Margaret's,
+where he hung in his great gold frame--silent and questioning.
+
+"If all the tales they tell about you are true, you must wonder what
+has happened to Saint Margaret's since you turned it over to a board of
+trustees."
+
+She went in and stood close to him, smiling wistfully.  "Perhaps you
+would like me to leave you the primroses until after the meeting--they
+would be sure to cheer you up; and they might--they might--"  Laughing,
+she went over to the President's desk and put the flowers in the green
+Devonshire bowl.
+
+She was sitting in the President's chair, coaxing some of the hoydenish
+blossoms into place, when the House Surgeon looked in a moment later.
+
+"Hello!  What are you doing?  I thought you detested this room."  He
+spoke in a teasing, big-brother way, while his eyes dwelt pleasurably
+on the small gray figure in the President's chair.  For, be it said
+without partiality or prejudice, Margaret MacLean was beautiful, with a
+beauty altogether free from self-appraisement.
+
+"I do--I hate it!"  Then she wagged her head and raised a significant
+finger in perfect imitation of the flower-seller.  "I am dabbling
+in--magic.  I am starting here a terrible and insidious campaign
+against gloom."
+
+The House Surgeon looked amused.  "You make me shiver, all right; but I
+haven't the smallest guess coming.  Would you mind putting it into
+scientific American?"
+
+"I'm afraid I couldn't.  But I can make a plain statement in
+prose--this is Trustee Day."
+
+"Hell!"  The House Surgeon walked over to the calendar on the desk to
+verify the fact.  "Well, what are you going to do about it?"
+
+Margaret MacLean spread her hands over the primroses, indicatively.  "I
+told you--magic."  She wrinkled up her forehead into a worrisome frown.
+"Let me see; I counted them, up last night, and I have had two hundred
+and twenty-eight Trustee Days in my life.  I have tried about
+everything else--philosophy, Christianity, optimism, mental sclerosis,
+and missionary fever; but never magic.  Don't you think it
+sounds--hopeful?"
+
+The House Surgeon laughed.  "You are the funniest little person I ever
+knew.  On duty you're as old as Methuselah and as wise as Hippocrates,
+but the rest of the time I believe your feet are eternally treading the
+nap off antique wishing-carpets.  I wonder how many you've worn out.
+As for that head of yours, it bobs like a penny balloon among the
+clouds looking for--"
+
+"Faeries?" suggested Margaret MacLean.
+
+"That just about hits it.  Will you please tell me how you, of all
+people, ever evolved these--ideas--out of Saint Margaret's?"
+
+A grim smile tightened the corners of her mouth while she looked across
+the room to the portrait that hung opposite the Founder's--the portrait
+of the Old Senior Surgeon.  "I had to," she said at last.  "When a
+person is born with absolutely nothing--nothing of the human things a
+human baby is entitled to--she has to evolve something to live in; a
+sort of sea-urchin affair with spines of make-believe sticking out all
+over it to keep prodding away life as it really is.  If she didn't the
+things she had missed would flatten her out into a flabby pulp--just
+skin and feelings."
+
+"And so you make believe that Trustee Day isn't really bad?"
+
+"Oh dear, no!  But I keep believing it's going to be much better.  Did
+you ever think what it could be like--if the trustees would only make
+it something more than--a matter of business?  Why, it could be as good
+as any faery-tale come true, with a dozen god-parents instead of one;
+and think of the wonderful things they could do it they tried.
+Think--think--and, oh, the fun of it!"
+
+She broke off with a little shivering ache.  When the picture became so
+alive that it pulled at one's heart-strings, it was time to stop.  But
+the next moment she was laughing merrily.
+
+"Do you know, when I was a little tad and couldn't sleep at night with
+the pain, I used to make believe I was a 'truster' and say over to
+myself all the nice, comforting things I wished they would say.  It
+began to sound so real that one day I answered--just as if some one had
+said something pleasant."
+
+"Well?" interrogated the House Surgeon, much amused.
+
+"Well, it was the Oldest Trustee, of course; and she raised those
+lorgnettes and reminded me that a good child never spoke unless she was
+spoken to.  I suppose it will take lots and lots of magic to turn them
+into god-parents."
+
+"Look here," and the House Surgeon reached across the desk and took a
+firm, big-brother grip of her hands, "faery-tales have to have
+stepmothers as well as godmothers--think of it that way.  And remember
+that those kiddies of yours were never born to ride in pumpkin coaches."
+
+"But I'm not reaching out for faery luxuries for them.  I want them to
+be children--plain, happy, laughing children--with as normal a heritage
+as we can scrape together for them.  All it needs is the magic of a
+little human understanding.  That's the most potent magic in the whole
+world.  Why, it can do anything!"
+
+A little-girl look came into Margaret MacLean's face.  It always did
+when she was wanting anything very much or was thinking about something
+very intensely.  It was the hardest kind of a look to resist.  She had
+often threshed this subject out with the House Surgeon before; for it
+was her theory that when a body's material condition was rather poor
+and meager there was all the more reason for scraping together what one
+could of a spiritual heritage and living thereby.
+
+"And don't you see," she had urged, at least a score of times,
+"if we could only teach all the cripples to let their minds
+run--free-limbed--over hilltops and pleasant places, their natures
+would never need to warp and wither after the fashion of their poor
+bodies.  And the time to begin is in childhood, when the mind is
+learning to walk alone."
+
+Usually the House Surgeon was easily convinced to the Margaret MacLean
+side of any argument; but this time, for reasons of his own, he turned
+an unsympathetic and stubborn ear.  He was coming to believe very
+strongly that all this fanciful optimism was so much laughing-gas, with
+only a passing power, and when the effect wore off there would be the
+Dickens to pay.  He did not want to see Margaret MacLean turn into a
+bitter-minded woman of the world--stripped of her trust and her dreams.
+He--all of them--had need of her as she was.  Her belief in the
+ultimate good of things and persons, however, was beyond power of human
+achievement; and the surest cure for disappointments was to amputate
+all expectations.  So the House Surgeon hardened his heart and became
+as professionally severe as he knew how to be.
+
+"It's absolutely impossible to expect a group of incurable children in
+an institution to be made as normal and happy as other children.  It
+can't be done.  Those kiddies are up against a pretty hard proposition,
+I know; but the kindest thing you can do for them is to toughen them
+into not feeling--"
+
+The nurse in charge of Ward C wrenched away her hands fiercely.
+"You're just like the Senior Surgeon.  He thinks the whole dependent
+world--the sick and the poor and the incompetent--have no business with
+ideas or feelings of their own.  He's always saying, 'Train it out of
+them; train it out of them; and it will make it easier for institutions
+to take care of them.'  It's for ever the 'right of the strong' with
+him.  Unless you are able to take care of yourself you are not entitled
+to the ordinary privileges of a human being."
+
+"I'm not at all like the Senior Surgeon.  I don't mean that, and you
+know it.  What I am trying to make you understand is that these kiddies
+can't keep you always; some time they will have to learn to do without
+you.  When that happens it will come tough on them.  It would come
+tough on anybody; and the square thing for you to do is to stop
+being--so all-fired adorable."  The House Surgeon flung back his head
+and marched out of the board-room, slamming the door.
+
+Behind the slammed door Margaret MacLean eyed the primroses
+suspiciously.  "I wonder--is your magic working all right to-day?
+Please--please don't weave any charms against him, little faery people.
+He is the only other grown-up person who has ever understood the least
+bit; and I couldn't bear to lose him, too."
+
+For the second time that morning she nestled her cheek against the
+blossoms.  Then the clock on the hospital tower struck eight.  She
+jumped with a start.  "Time to go on duty."  Once again her eyes met
+the eyes of the Founder and sparkled witchingly.  She raised high the
+green Devonshire bowl from the President's desk as for a toast.
+
+"Here's to Saint Margaret's--as you founded her; and the children--as
+you meant them to be; and here's to the one who first understood!" She
+turned from the Founder to the portrait hanging opposite, and bowed
+most worshipfully to the Old Senior Surgeon.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+IN WHICH MARGARET MACLEAN REVIEWS A MEMORY
+
+As Margaret MacLean climbed the stairs to Ward C--she rarely took the
+lift, it was too remindful of the time when she could not climb
+stairs--her mind thought back a step for each step she mounted.  When
+she had reached the top of the first flight she was a child again, back
+in one of the little white iron cribs in her own ward; and it was the
+day when the first stringent consciousness came to her that she hated
+Trustee Day.
+
+The Old Senior Surgeon--the present one, of whom Saint Margaret's felt
+inordinately proud, was house surgeon then--had come into Ward C for a
+peep at her, and had called out, according to a firmly established
+custom, "Hello, Thumbkin!  What's the news?"
+
+She had been "Thumbkin" to him ever since the night he had carried her
+into the hospital, a tiny mite of a baby; and he had woven out of her
+coming a marvelous story--fancy-fashioned.  This he had told her at
+least twice a week, from the time she was old enough to ask for it,
+because it had popped into his head quite suddenly that this morsel of
+humanity would some day insist on being accounted for.
+
+The bare facts concerning her were rather shabby ones.  She had been
+unceremoniously dumped into his arms by a delegate from the Foundling
+Asylum, who had found him the most convenient receptacle nearest the
+door; and he had been offered the meager information that she belonged
+to no one, was wrong somehow, and a hospital was the place for her.
+
+One hardly likes to pass on shabby garments, much less shabby facts, to
+cover another's past.  So the Old Senior Surgeon had forestalled her
+inquisitiveness with a tale adorned with all the pretty imaginings that
+he, "a clumsy-minded old gruffian," could conjure up.
+
+Margaret MacLean remembered the story--word for word--as we remember
+"The House That Jack Built."  It began with the Old Senior Surgeon
+himself, who heard a pair of birds disputing in one of the two trees
+which sentineled the hospital.  They had built a nest therein; it was
+bedtime, and they wished to retire, only something prevented.  Upon
+investigation he discovered the cause--"and there you were, my dear, no
+bigger than my thumb!"
+
+This was the nucleus of the story; but the Old Senior Surgeon had
+rolled it about, hither and yon, adding adventure after adventure,
+until it had assumed gigantic proportions.  As she grew older she took
+a hand in the adventure-making herself, he supplying the bare plot, she
+weaving the threads therefrom into a detailed narrative which she
+retold to him later, with a few imaginings of her own added.  This is
+what had established the custom for the Old Senior Surgeon to take a
+peep into Ward C at day's end and call across to her: "Hello, Thumbkin!
+What's the news?" or, "What's happened next?"  And until this day the
+answer had always been a joyous one.
+
+Margaret MacLean, grown, could look back at tiny Margaret MacLean and
+see her very clearly as she straightened up in the little iron crib and
+answered in a shrill, tense voice: "I'm not Thumbkin.  I'm a foundling.
+I don't belong to anybody.  I never had any father or mother or
+nothing, but just a hurt back; they said so.  They stood right
+there--two of them; and one told the other all about me."
+
+This was the end of the story, and the beginning of Trustee Days for
+Margaret MacLean.
+
+She soon made the discovery that she was not the only child in the ward
+who felt about it that way.  Her discovery was a matter of intuition
+rather than knowledge; for--as if by silent consent--the topic was
+carefully avoided in the usual ward conversation.  One does not make it
+a rule to talk about the hobgoblins that lurk in the halls at night, or
+the gray, creeping shapes that come out of dark corners and closets
+after one has gone to bed, if one is so pitifully unfortunate as to
+possess these things in childhood.  Instead one just remembers and
+waits, shivering.  Only to old Cassie, the scrub-woman, who was young
+Cassie then, did she confide her fear.  From her she received a
+charm--compounded of goose eggshells and vinegar--which Cassie claimed
+to be what they used in Ireland to unbewitch changelings.  She kept the
+charm hidden for months under her pillow.  It proved comforting,
+although absolutely ineffectual.
+
+And for months there had been a strained relationship between the Old
+Senior Surgeon and herself, causing them both much embarrassment.  She
+resented the story he had made for her with all her child soul; he had
+cheated her--fooled her.  She felt much as we felt toward our parents
+when we made our first discovery concerning Santa Claus.
+
+But after a time--a long time--the story came to belong to her again;
+she grew to realize that the Old Senior Surgeon had told it
+truthfully--only with the unconscious tongue of the poet instead of the
+grim realist.  She found out as well that it had done a wonderful thing
+for her: it had turned life into an adventure--a quest upon which one
+was bound to depart, no matter how poorly one's feet might be shod or
+how persistently the rain and wind bit at one's marrow through the rags
+of a conventional cloak.  More than this--it had colored the road ahead
+for her, promising pleasant comradeship and good cheer; it would keep
+her from ever losing heart or turning back.
+
+A day came at last when she and the Old Senior Surgeon could laugh--a
+little foolishly, perhaps--over the child-story; and then, just because
+they could laugh at it and feel happy, they told it together all over
+again.  They made much of Thumbkin's christening feast, and the gifts
+the good godmothers brought.
+
+"Let me see," said the Old Senior Surgeon, cocking his head
+thoughtfully, "there was the business-like little party on a
+broomstick, carrying grit--plain grit."
+
+"And the next one brought happiness--didn't she?" asked little Margaret
+MacLean.
+
+He nodded.  "Of course.  Then came a little gray-haired faery with a
+nosegay of Thoughts-for-other-folks, all dried and ready to put away
+like sweet lavender."
+
+"And did the next bring love?"
+
+Again he agreed.  "But after her, my dear, came a comfortable old lady
+in a chaise with a market-basket full of common-sense."
+
+"And then--then--  Oh, couldn't the one after her bring beauty?  Some
+one always did in the book stories.  I think I wouldn't mind the back
+and--other things so much if my face could be nice."
+
+Margaret MacLean, grown, could remember well how tearfully eager little
+Margaret MacLean had been.
+
+The Old Senior Surgeon looked down with an odd, crinkly smile.  "Have
+you never looked into a glass, Thumbkin?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+Children in the wards of free hospitals have no way of telling how they
+look, and perhaps it is better that way.  Only if it happens--as it
+does sometimes--that they spend a good share of their life there, it
+seems as if they never had a chance to get properly acquainted with
+themselves.
+
+For a moment he patted her hand; after which he said, very solemnly:
+"Wait for a year and a day--then look.  You will find out then just
+what the next faery brought."
+
+Margaret MacLean had obeyed this command to the letter.  When the year
+and a day came she had been able to stand on tiptoe and look at herself
+for the first time in her life; and she would never forget the gladness
+of that moment.  It had appeared nothing short of a miracle to her that
+she should actually possess something of which she need not be
+ashamed--something nice to share with the world.  And whenever Margaret
+MacLean thought of her looks at all, which was rare, she thought of
+them in that way.
+
+She took up the memory again where she had dropped it on the second
+flight of stairs, slowly climbing her way to Ward C, and went on with
+the story.
+
+They came to the place where Thumbkin was pricked by the wicked faery
+with the sleeping-thorn and put to sleep for a hundred years, after the
+fashion of many another story princess; and the Old Senior Surgeon
+suddenly stopped and looked at her sharply.
+
+"Some day, Thumbkin, I may play the wicked faery and put you to sleep.
+What would you say to that?"
+
+She did not say--then.
+
+More months passed, months which brought an ashen, drawn look to the
+face of the Old Senior Surgeon, and a tired-out droop to his shoulders
+and eyes.  She began to notice that the nurses eyed him pityingly
+whenever he came into the ward, and the house surgeon shook his head
+ominously.  She wondered what it meant; she wondered more when he came
+at last to remind her of his threatened promise.
+
+"You remember, Thumbkin, about that sleep?  Would you let an old faery
+doctor put you to sleep, for a little while, if he was very sure you
+would wake up to find happiness--and health--and love--and all the
+other gifts the godmothers brought?"
+
+She tried her best to keep the frightened look out of her eyes.  By the
+way he watched her, however, she knew some of it must have crept in.
+"Operation?" she managed to choke out at last.
+
+Operation was a fairly common word in Ward C, and not an over-hopeful
+one.
+
+"It's this way, Thumbkin; and let's make a bargain of it.  I think
+there's a cure for that back of yours.  It hasn't been tried very much;
+about often enough to make it worth while for us to take a chance.
+I'll be honest with you and tell you the house surgeon doesn't think it
+can be done; but that's where the bargain comes in.  He thinks he can
+mend my trouble, and I don't; and we're both dreadfully greedy to prove
+we're right.  Now if you will give me my way with you I will give him
+his.  But you must come first."
+
+"A hundred years is a long time to be asleep," she objected.
+
+"Bless you, it won't be a hundred minutes."
+
+"And does your back need it, too?"
+
+"Not my back; my stomach.  It's about the only chance for either of us,
+Thumbkin."
+
+"And you won't unless I do?"
+
+The Old Senior Surgeon gave his head a terrific shake; then he caught
+her small hands in his great, warm, comforting ones.  "Think.  It means
+a strong back; a pair of sturdy little legs to take you anywhere; and
+the whole world before you!"
+
+"And you'll have them, too?"
+
+He smiled convincingly.
+
+"All right.  Let's."  She gave his hand a hard, trustful squeeze.
+
+She liked to remember that squeeze.  She often wondered if it might not
+have helped him to do what he had to do.
+
+Her operation was record-making in its success; and after he had seen
+her well on the mend he gave himself over to the house surgeon and a
+fellow-colleague, according to the bargain.  He proved the house
+surgeon wrong, for he never rallied.  Undoubtedly he knew this would be
+the way of it; for he stopped in Ward C before he went up to the
+operating-room and said to her:
+
+"I shall be sleeping longer than you did, Thumbkin; but, never fear, I
+shall be waking some time, somewhere.  And remember this: Never grow so
+strong and well that you forget how tiresome a hospital crib can be.
+Never be so happy that you grow blind to the heartaches of other
+children; and never wander so far away from Saint Margaret's that you
+can't come back, sometimes, and make a story for some one else."
+
+She puzzled a good bit over this, especially the first part of it; but
+when they told her the next day, she understood.  Probably she grieved
+for him more than had any one else; even more than the members of his
+own family or profession.  For, whereas there are many people in the
+world who can give life to others, there are but few who can help
+others to possess it.
+
+What childhood she had had she left behind her soon after this, along
+with her aching back, her helpless limbs, and the little iron crib in
+Ward C.
+
+On the first Trustee Day following her complete recovery she appeared,
+at her own request, before the meeting of the board.  In a small,
+frightened voice she asked them to please send her away to school.  She
+wanted to learn enough to come back to Saint Margaret's and be a nurse.
+
+The trustees consented.  Having assumed the responsibility of her
+well-being for over fifteen years, they could not very easily shirk it
+now.  Furthermore, was it not a praise-worthy tribute to Saint
+Margaret's as a charitable institution, and to themselves as trustees,
+that this child whom they had sheltered and helped to cure should
+choose this way of showing her gratitude?  Verily, the board pruned and
+plumed itself well that day.
+
+All this Margaret MacLean lived over again as she climbed the stairs to
+Ward C on the 30th of April, her heart glowing warm with the memory of
+this man who had first understood; who had freed her mind from the
+abnormality of her body and the stigma of her heritage; who had made it
+possible for her to live wholesomely and deeply; and who had set her
+feet upon a joyous mission.  For the thousandth time she blessed that
+memory.
+
+It had been no disloyalty on her part that she had closed her lips and
+said nothing when the House Surgeon had questioned her about her
+fancy-making.  She could never get away from the feeling that some of
+the sweetness and sacredness might be lost with the telling of the
+memory.  One is so apt to cheapen a thing when one tries hastily to put
+it into words, and ever afterward it is never quite the same.
+
+On the second floor she stopped; and by chance she looked over, between
+spiral banisters, to the patch of hallway below.  It just happened that
+the House Surgeon was standing there, talking with one of the internes.
+
+Margaret MacLean smiled whimsically.  "If there is a soul in the wide
+world I could share it with, it is the House Surgeon."  And then she
+added, aloud, softly apostrophizing the top of his head, "I think some
+day you might grow to be very--very like the Old Senior Surgeon; that
+is, if you would only stop trying to be like the present one."
+
+[Illustration: "If there is a soul in the wide world I could share it
+with, it is the House Surgeon."]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+WARD C
+
+A welcoming shout went up from Ward C as Margaret MacLean entered.  It
+was lusty enough to have come from the throats of healthy children, and
+it would have sounded happily to the most impartial ears; to the nurse
+in charge it was a very pagan of gladness.
+
+"Wish you good morning, good meals, and good manners," laughed Margaret
+MacLean; and then she went from crib to crib with a special greeting
+for each one.  Oh, she firmly believed that a great deal depended on
+how the day began.
+
+In the first crib lay Pancho, of South American parentage, partially
+paralyzed and wholly captivating.  He had been in Saint Margaret's
+since babyhood--he was six now--and had never worn anything but a
+little hospital shirt.
+
+"Good morning, Brown Baby," she said, kissing his forehead.  "It's just
+the day for you out on the sun-porch; and you'll hear birds--lots of
+them."
+
+"Wobins?"
+
+"Yes, and bluebirds, too.  I've heard them already."
+
+Next came Sandy--merry of heart--a humpback laddie from Aberdeen.  His
+parents had gone down with the steerage of a great ocean liner, and
+society had cared for him until the first horror of the tragedy had
+passed; then some one fortunately had mentioned Saint Margaret's, and
+society was relieved of its burden.  In the year he had spent here his
+Aberdonian burr had softened somewhat and a number of American
+colloquialisms had crept into his speech; but for all that he was "the
+braw canny Scot"--as the House Surgeon always termed him--and he
+objected to kisses.  So the good-morning greeting was a hearty
+hand-shake between the two--comrade fashion.
+
+"It wad be a bonnie day i' Aberdeen," he reminded her, blithely.  "But
+'tis no the robins there 'at wad be singin'."
+
+"Shall I guess?"
+
+"Na, I'll tell ye.  Laverocks!"
+
+"Really, Sandy?"  And then she suddenly remembered something.  "Now you
+guess what you're going to have for supper to-night."
+
+"Porridge?"
+
+"No; scones!"
+
+"Bully!"  And Sandy clapped his hands ecstatically.
+
+Beside Sandy lay Susan--smart, shrewd, and American, with braced legs
+and back, and a philosophy that failed her only on Trustee Days.  But
+as calendars are not kept in Ward C no one knew what this day was; and
+consequently Susan was grinning all over her pinched, gnome-like little
+face.  Margaret MacLean kissed her on both cheeks; the Susan-kind
+hunger for affection, but the world rarely finds it out and therefore
+gives sparingly.
+
+"Guess yer couldn't guess what I dreamt last night, Miss Peggie?"
+
+"About the aunt?"  This was a mythical relation of Susan's who lived
+somewhere and who was supposed to turn up some day and claim Susan with
+open arms.  She was the source of many dreams and of much interested
+conversation and heated argument in the ward, and the children had her
+pictured down to the smallest detail of person and clothes.
+
+"No, 'tain't my aunt this time.  I dreamt you was gettin' married, Miss
+Peggie."  And Susan giggled delightedly.
+
+"An' goin' away?"  This was groaned out in chorus from the two cots
+following Susan's, wherein lay James and John--fellow-Apostles of
+pain--bound closely together in that spiritual brotherhood.  They were
+sitting up, holding hands and staring at Margaret with wide,
+anguish-filled eyes.
+
+"Of course I'm not going away, little brothers; and I'm not going to
+get married.  Does any one ever get married in Saint Margaret's?"
+
+The Apostles thought very hard about it for a moment; but as it had
+never happened before, of course it never would now, and Miss Peggie
+was safe.
+
+The whole ward smiled again.  But in that moment Margaret MacLean
+remembered what the House Surgeon had said, and wondered.  Was she
+building up for them an ultimate discontent in trying to make life
+happy and full for them now?  Could not minds like theirs be taught to
+walk alone, after all?  And then she laughed to herself for worrying.
+Why should the children ever have to do without her--unless--unless
+something came to them far better--like Susan's mythical aunt?  The
+children need never leave Saint Margaret's as long as they lived, and
+she never should; and she passed on to the next cot, content that all
+was well.
+
+As she stooped over the bed a pair of thin little arms flew out and
+clasped themselves tightly about her neck; a head with a shock of red
+curls buried itself in the folds of the gray uniform.  This was
+Bridget--daughter of the Irish sod, oldest of the ward, general
+caretaker and best beloved; although it should be added in justice to
+both Bridget and Margaret MacLean that the former had no consciousness
+of it, and the latter took great care to hide it.
+
+[Illustration: As she stooped over the bed a pair of thin little arms
+flew out and clasped themselves tightly about her neck.]
+
+It was Bridget who read to the others when no one else could; it was
+Bridget who remembered some wonderful story to tell on those days when
+Sandy's back was particularly bad or the Apostles grew over-despondent;
+and it was Bridget who laughed and sang on the gray days when the sun
+refused to be cheery.  Undoubtedly it was because of all these things
+that her cot was in the center of Ward C.
+
+Concerning Bridget herself, hers was a case of arsenical poisoning,
+slowly absorbed while winding daisy-stems for an East Broadway
+manufacturer of cheap artificial flowers.  She had done this for three
+years--since she was five--thereby helping her mother to support
+themselves and two younger children.  She was ten now and the Senior
+Surgeon had already reckoned her days.
+
+In the shadow of Bridget's cot was Rosita's crib--Rosita being the
+youngest, the most sensitive, and the most given to homesickness.  This
+last was undoubtedly due to the fact that she was the only child in the
+incurable ward blessed in the matter of a home.  Her parents were
+honest-working Italians who adored her, but who were too ignorant and
+indulgent to keep her alive.  They came every Sunday, and sat out the
+allotted time for visitors beside her crib, while the other children
+watched in a silent, hungry-eyed fashion.
+
+Margaret MacLean passed her with a kiss and went on to
+Peter--Peter--seven years old--congenital hip disease--and all boy.
+
+"Hello, you!" he shouted, squirming under the kiss that he would not
+have missed for anything.
+
+"Hello, you!" answered back the administering nurse, and then she
+asked, solemnly, "How's Toby?"
+
+"He's--he's fine.  That soap the House Surgeon give me cured his fleas
+all up."
+
+Toby was even more mythical than Susan's aunt; she was based on certain
+authentic facts, whereas Toby was solely the creation of a dog-adoring
+little brain.  But no one was ever inconsiderate enough to hint at his
+airy fabrication; and Margaret MacLean always inquired after him every
+morning with the same interest that she bestowed on the other occupants
+of Ward C.
+
+Last in the ward came Michael, a diminutive Russian exile with valvular
+heart trouble and a most atrocious vocabulary.  The one seemed as
+incurable as the other.  Margaret MacLean had wrestled with the
+vocabulary on memorable occasions--to no avail; and although she had
+long since discovered it was a matter of words and not meanings with
+him, it troubled her none the less.  And because Michael came the
+nearest to being the black sheep of this sanitary fold she showed for
+him always an unfailing gentleness.
+
+"Good morning, dear," she said, running her fingers through the
+perpendicular curls that bristled continuously.
+
+"Goot mornun, tear," he mimicked, mischievously; and then he added,
+with an irresistible smile, "Und Got-tam-you."
+
+"Oh, Michael, don't you remember, the next time you were going to say
+'God bless you'?"
+
+"Awright--next time."
+
+Margaret MacLean sighed unconsciously.  Michael's "next time" was about
+as reliable as the South American _mañana_; and he seemed as much an
+alien now as the day he was brought into the ward.  And then, because
+she believed that kindness was the strongest weapon for victory in the
+end, she did the thing Michael loved best.
+
+Ward C was turned into a circus menagerie, and Margaret MacLean and her
+assistant were turned into keepers.  Together they set about the duties
+for the day with great good-humor.  Two seals, a wriggling
+hippopotamus, a roaring polar bear, a sea-serpent of surprising
+activities, two teeth-grinding alligators, a walrus, and a baby
+elephant were bathed with considerable difficulty and excitement.  It
+was Sandy who insisted on being the elephant in spite of a heated
+argument from the other animals that, having a hump, he ought to be a
+camel.  They forgave him later, however, when he squirted forth his
+tooth-brush water and trumpeted triumphantly, thereby causing the
+entire menagerie to squirm about and bellow in great glee.
+
+At this point the head keeper had to turn them all back instantly into
+children, and she delivered a firm but gentle lecture on the
+inconsiderateness of soaking a freshly changed bed.
+
+Sandy broke into penitent tears; and because tears were never allowed
+to dampen the atmosphere of Ward C when they could possibly be dammed,
+Margaret MacLean did the "best-of-all-things."  She pushed the cribs
+and cots all together into a "special" with observation-cars; then,
+changing into an engineer, and with a call to Toby to jump aboard, she
+swung herself into the caboose-rocker and opened the throttle.  The
+bell rang; the whistle tooted; and the engine gave a final snort and
+puff, bounding away countryward where spring had come.
+
+Those of you who live where you can always look out on pleasant places,
+or who can travel at will into them, may find it hard to understand how
+wearisome and stupid it grows to be always in one room with an
+encompassing sky-line of roof-tops and chimneys, or may fail to sound
+the full depths of wonder and delight over the ride that Ward C took
+that memorable day.
+
+The engineer pointed out everything--meadows full of flowers, trees
+full of birds, gardens new planted, and corn-fields guarded by
+scarecrows.  She slowed up at the barnyards that the children might
+hear the crowing cocks and clucking hens with their new-hatched broods,
+and see the neighboring pastures with their flocks of sheep and tiny
+lambs.
+
+"A ken them weel--hoo the wee creepits bleeted hame i' Aberdeen!"
+shouted Sandy, bleeting for the whole pastureful.
+
+And when they came to the smallest of mountain brooks the engineer
+followed it, down, down, until it had grown into a stream with
+cowslipped banks; and on and on until it had grown into a river with
+little boats and sandy shore and leaping fish.  Here the engineer
+stopped the train; and every one who wanted to--and there were none who
+did not--went paddling; and some went splashing about just as if they
+could swim.
+
+Back in the "special," they climbed a hilltop, slowly, so that the
+engineer could point out each farm and pasture and stream in miniature
+that they had seen close by.
+
+"That's the wonder of a hilltop," she explained; "you can see
+everything neighboring each other."  And when they reached the crest
+she clapped her hands.  "Oh, children dear, wouldn't it be beautiful to
+build a house on a hilltop just like this to live in always!"
+
+Afterward they rode into deep woods, where the sunlight came down
+through the trees like splashes of gold; and here the engineer
+suggested they should have a picnic.
+
+As Margaret MacLean stepped out into the hall to look up the
+dinner-trays she met the House Surgeon.
+
+"Dreading it as much as usual?" he asked, in the teasing, big-brother
+tone; but he looked at her in quite another way.
+
+She laughed.  "I'm hoping it isn't going to be as bad as the time
+before--and the time before that--and the time before that."  She
+pushed back some moist curls that had slipped out from under her
+cap--engineering was hard work--and the little-girl look came into her
+face.  She looked up mischievously at the House Surgeon.  "You couldn't
+possibly guess what I've been doing all morning."
+
+The House Surgeon wrinkled his forehead in his most professional
+manner.  "Precautionary disinfecting?"
+
+Margaret MacLean laughed again.  "That's an awfully good guess, but
+it's wrong.  I've been administering antitoxin for trusteria."
+
+In spite of her gay assurance before the House Surgeon, however, it was
+rather a sober nurse in charge of Ward C who sat down that afternoon
+with a book of faery-tales on her knee open to the story of "The
+Steadfast Tin Soldier."  As for Ward C, it was supremely happy; its
+beloved "Miss Peggie" was on duty for the afternoon with the favorite
+book for company; moreover, no one had discovered as yet that this was
+Trustee Day and that the trustees themselves were already near at hand.
+
+A shadow fell athwart the threshold that very moment.  Margaret MacLean
+could feel it without taking her eyes from the book, and, purposefully
+unmindful of its presence, she kept reading steadily on:
+
+"'The paper boat was rocking up and down; sometimes it turned round so
+quickly that the Tin Soldier trembled; but he remained firm, he did not
+move a muscle, and looked straight forward, shouldering his musket.'"
+
+"Ah, Miss MacLean, may I speak with you a moment?"  It was the voice of
+the Meanest Trustee.
+
+The nurse in charge rose quickly and met him half-way, hoping to keep
+him and whatever he might have to say as far from the children as
+possible.
+
+The Meanest Trustee continued in a little, short, sharp voice: "The
+cook tells me that the patients in this ward have been having extra
+food prepared for them of late, such as fruit and jellies and scones
+and even ice-cream.  I discovered it for myself.  I saw some pineapples
+in the refrigerator when I was inspecting it this afternoon, and the
+cook said it was your orders."
+
+Margaret MacLean smiled her most ingratiating smile.  "You see," she
+said, eagerly, "the children in this ward get fearfully tired of the
+same things to eat; it is not like the other wards where the children
+stay only a short time.  So I thought it would be nice to have
+something different--once in a while; and then the old things would
+taste all the better--don't you see?  I felt sure the trustees would be
+willing."
+
+"Well, they are not.  It is an entirely unnecessary expense which I
+will not countenance.  The regular food is good and wholesome, and the
+patients ought to feel grateful for it instead of finding fault."
+
+The nurse looked anxiously toward the cots, then dropped her voice half
+an octave lower.
+
+"The children have never found fault; it was just my idea to give them
+a treat when they were not expecting it.  As for the extra expense,
+there has been none; I have paid for everything myself."
+
+The Meanest Trustee readjusted his eye-glasses and looked closer at the
+young woman before him.  "Do you mean to say you paid for them out of
+your own wages?"
+
+The nurse nodded.
+
+"Then all I have to say is that I consider it an extremely idiotic
+performance which had better be stopped.  Children should not be
+indulged."
+
+And he went away muttering something about the poor always remaining
+poor with their foolish notions of throwing away money; and Margaret
+MacLean went back to the book of faery-tales.  But as she was looking
+for the place Sandy grunted forth stubbornly:
+
+"A'm no wantin' ony scones the nicht, so ye maun na fetch them."
+
+And Peter piped out, "Trusterday, ain't it, Miss Peggie?"
+
+"Yes, dear.  Now shall we go on with the story?"
+
+She had read to where the rat was demanding the passport when she
+recognized the President's step outside the door.  In another moment he
+was standing beside her chair, looking at the book on her knee.
+
+"Humph! faery-tales!  Is that not very foolish?  Don't you think, Miss
+Margaret, it would be more suitable to their condition in life if you
+should select--hmm--something like _Pilgrim's Progress_ or _Lives of
+the Saints and Martyrs_?  Something that would be a preparation--so to
+speak--for the future."  He stood facing her now, his back to the
+children.
+
+"Excuse me"--she was smiling up at him--"but I thought this was a
+better preparation."
+
+The President frowned.  He was a much-tried man--a man of charitable
+parts, who directed or presided over thirty organizations.  It took him
+nearly thirty days each month--with the help of two private secretaries
+and a luxurious office--to properly attend to all the work resulting
+therefrom; and the matters in hand were often so trying and perplexing
+that he had to go abroad every other year to avoid a nervous breakdown.
+
+"I think we took up this matter at one of the business meetings," he
+went on, patiently, "and some arrangement was made for one of the
+trustees to come and read the Bible and teach the children their
+respective creeds and catechisms."
+
+Margaret MacLean nodded.  "There was; Miss N----"--and she named the
+Youngest and Prettiest Trustee--"generally comes an hour before the
+meeting and reads to them; but to-day she was detained by a--tango tea,
+I believe.  That's why I chose this."  Her eyes danced unconsciously as
+she tapped the book.
+
+The President looked at her sharply.  "I should think, my dear young
+lady, that you, of all persons, would realize what a very serious thing
+life is to any one in this condition.  Instead of that I fear at times
+that you are--shall I say--flippant?"  He turned about and looked at
+the children.  "How do you do?" he asked, kindly.
+
+"Thank you, sir, we are very well, sir," they chorused in reply.  Saint
+Margaret's was never found wanting in politeness.
+
+The President left; and the nurse in charge of Ward C went on with the
+reading.
+
+"'The Tin Soldier stood up to his neck in water; deeper and deeper sank
+the boat, and the paper became more and more limp; then the water
+closed over him; but the Tin Soldier remained firm and shouldered his
+musket.'"
+
+A group filled the doorway; it was the voice of the Oldest Trustee that
+floated in.  "This, my dear, is the incurable ward; we are very much
+interested in it."
+
+They stood just over the threshold--the Oldest Trustee in advance, her
+figure commanding and unbent, for all her seventy years, and her
+lorgnette raised.  As she was speaking a little gray wisp of a woman
+detached herself from the group and moved slowly down the row of cots.
+
+"Yes," continued the Oldest Trustee, "we have two cases of congenital
+hip disease and three of spinal tuberculosis--that is one of them in
+the second crib."  Her eyes moved on from Sandy to Rosita.  "And the
+fifth patient has such a dreadful case of rheumatism.  Sad, isn't it,
+in so young a child?  Yes, the Senior Surgeon says it is absolutely
+incurable."
+
+Margaret MacLean closed the book with a bang; for five minutes the
+children had been looking straight ahead with big, conscious eyes,
+hearing not a word.  Rebellion gripped at her heart and she rose
+quickly and went over to the group.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to come in and talk to the children?  They are
+rather sober this afternoon; perhaps you could make them laugh."
+
+"Yes, wouldn't you like to go in?" put in the Oldest Trustee.  "They
+are very nice children."
+
+But the visitors shrank back an almost infinitesimal distance; and one
+said, hesitatingly:
+
+"I'm afraid we wouldn't know quite what to say to them."
+
+"Perhaps you would like to see the new pictures for the nurses' room?"
+the nurse in charge suggested, wistfully.
+
+The Oldest Trustee glanced at her with a hint of annoyance.  "We have
+already seen them.  I think you must have forgotten, my dear, that it
+was I who gave them."
+
+With flashing cheeks Margaret MacLean fled from Ward C.  If she had
+stayed long enough to watch the little gray wisp of a woman move
+quietly from cot to cot, patting each small hand and asking, tenderly,
+"And what is your name, dearie?" she might have carried with her a
+happier feeling.  At the door of the board-room she ran into the House
+Surgeon.
+
+"Is it as bad as all that?" he asked after one good look at her.
+
+"It's worse--a hundred times worse!"  She tossed her head angrily.  "Do
+you know what is going to happen some day?  I shall forget who I
+am--and who they are and what they have done for me--and say things
+they will never forgive.  My mind-string will just snap, that's all;
+and every little pestering, forbidden thought that has been kicking its
+heels against self-control and sense-of-duty all these years will come
+tumbling out and slip off the edge of my tongue before I even know it
+is there."
+
+"They are some hot little thoughts, I wager," laughed the House Surgeon.
+
+And then, from the far end of the cross-corridor, came the voice of the
+Oldest Trustee, talking to the group:
+
+". . . such a very sweet girl--never forgets her place or her duty.
+She was brought here from the Foundling Asylum when she was a baby, in
+almost a dying condition.  Every one thought it was an incurable case;
+the doctors still shake their heads over her miraculous recovery.  Of
+course it took years; and she grew up in the hospital."
+
+With a look of dumb, battling anger the nurse in charge of Ward C
+turned from the House Surgeon--her hands clenched--while the voice of
+the Oldest Trustee came back to them, still exhibiting:
+
+"No, we have never been able to find out anything about her parentage;
+undoubtedly she was abandoned.  We named her 'Margaret MacLean,' after
+the hospital and the superintendent who was here then.  Yes, indeed--a
+very, very sad--"
+
+When the Oldest Trustee reached the boardroom it was empty, barring the
+primroses, which were guilelessly nodding in the green Devonshire bowl
+on the President's desk.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+CURABLES AND INCURABLES
+
+No one who entered the board-room that late afternoon remembered that
+it was May Eve; and even had he remembered, it would have amounted to
+nothing more than the mental process of association.  It would not have
+given him the faintest presentiment that at that very moment the Little
+People were busy pressing their cloth-o'-dream mantles and reblocking
+their wishing-caps; that the instant the sun went down the spell would
+be off the faery raths, setting them free all over the world, and that
+the gates of Tir-na-n'Og would be open wide for mortals to wander back
+again.  No, not one of the board remembered; the trustees sat looking
+straight at the primroses and saw nothing, felt nothing, guessed
+nothing.
+
+They were not unusual types of trustees who served on the board of
+Saint Margaret's.  You could find one or more of them duplicated in the
+directors' book of nearly any charitable institution, if you hunted for
+them; the strange part was, perhaps, that they were gathered together
+in a single unit of power.  Besides the Oldest and the Meanest
+Trustees, there were the Executive, the Social, the Disagreeable, the
+Busiest, the Dominating, the Calculating, the Petty, and the Youngest
+and Prettiest.  She came fluttering in a minute late from her tea; and
+right after her came the little gray wisp of a woman, who sat down in a
+chair by the door so unpretentiously as to make it appear as though she
+did not belong among them.  When the others saw her they nodded
+distantly: they had just been talking about her.
+
+It seemed that she was the widow of the Richest Trustee.  The board had
+elected her to fill her husband's place lest the annual check of ten
+thousand--a necessary item on Saint Margaret's books--might not be
+forthcoming; and this was her first meeting.  It was, in fact, her
+first visit to the hospital.  She could never bear to come during her
+husband's trusteeship because, children having been denied her, she had
+wished to avoid them wherever and whenever she could, and spare herself
+the pain their suggestion always brought her.  She would not have come
+now, but that her husband's memory seemed to require it of her.
+
+For years gossip had been busy with the wife of the Richest Trustee--as
+the widow she did not relax her hold.  What the trustees said that day
+they only repeated from gossip: the little gray wisp of a woman was a
+nonentity--nothing more--with the spirit of a mouse.  She held no
+position in society, and what she did with her time or her money no one
+knew.  The trustees smiled inwardly and reckoned silently with
+themselves; at least they would never need to fear opposition from her
+on any matter of importance.
+
+The last person of all to enter the boardroom was the Senior Surgeon.
+The President had evidently waited for him, for he nodded to the House
+Surgeon to close the doors the moment he came.
+
+Now the Senior Surgeon was a man who used capitals for Surgery,
+Science, and Self, unconsciously eliminating them elsewhere.  He had
+begun in Saint Margaret's as house surgeon; and he had grown to be
+considered by many of his own profession the leading man of his day.
+The trustees were as proud of him as they were of the hospital, and it
+has never been recorded in the traditions of Saint Margaret's that the
+Senior Surgeon had ever asked for anything that went ungranted.  He
+seldom attended a board meeting; consequently when he came in at
+five-thirty there was an audible rustle of excitement and the raising
+of anticipatory eyebrows.
+
+When the President called the meeting to order every trustee was
+present, as well as the heads of the four wards, the Superintendent,
+and the two surgeons.  The Senior Surgeon sat next to the President;
+the House Surgeon sat where he could watch equally well the profiles of
+the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee and Margaret MacLean.  His heart had
+always been inclined to intermit; or--as he put it to himself--he
+adored them both in quite opposite ways; and which way was the better
+and more endurable he had never been able to decide.
+
+"In view of the fact," said the President, rising, "that the Senior
+Surgeon can be with us but a short time this afternoon, and that he has
+a grave and vital issue to present to you, we will postpone the regular
+reports until the end of the meeting and take up at once the business
+in hand."  He paused a moment, feeling the dramatic value of his next
+remark.  "For some time the Senior Surgeon has seriously questioned
+the--hmm--advisability of continuing the incurable ward.  He wishes
+very much to bring the matter before you, and he is prepared to give
+you his reasons for so doing.  Afterward, I think it would be wise for
+us to discuss the matter very informally."  He bowed to the Senior
+Surgeon and sat down.
+
+The Meanest Trustee snapped his teeth together in an expression of grim
+satisfaction.  "That ward is costing a lot of unnecessary expense, I
+think," he barked out, sharply, "and it's being run with altogether too
+free a hand."  And he looked meaningly toward Margaret MacLean.
+
+No one paid any particular attention to his remark; they were too
+deeply engrossed in the Senior Surgeon.  And the House Surgeon,
+watching, saw the profile of the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee become
+even prettier as it blushed and turned in witching eagerness toward the
+man who was rising to address the meeting.  The other profile had
+turned rigid and white as a piece of marble.
+
+Now the Senior Surgeon could do a critical major operation in twenty
+minutes; and he could operate on critical issues quite as rapidly.
+Speed was his creed; therefore he characteristically attacked the
+subject in hand without any prefatory remarks.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen of the board, the incurable ward is doing
+nothing.  I can see no possible reason or opportunity for further
+observation or experimentation there.  Every case in it at the present
+time, as well as every Case that is likely to come to us, is as a
+sealed document as far as science is concerned.  They are
+incurable--they will remain incurable for all time."
+
+"How do you know?"  The question came from the set lips of the nurse in
+charge of Ward C.
+
+"How do we know anything in science?  We prove it by undeniable,
+irrevocable facts."
+
+"Even then you are not sure of it.  I was proved incurable--but I got
+well."
+
+"That proves absolutely nothing!"  And the Senior Surgeon growled as he
+always did when things went against his liking.  "You were a case in a
+thousand--in a lifetime.  Because it happened once--here in this
+hospital--is no reason for believing that it will ever happen again."
+
+"Oh yes, it is!" persisted Margaret MacLean.  "There is just as much
+reason for believing as for not believing.  Every one of those
+children, in the ward now might--yes, they might--be a case in a
+thousand; and no one has any right to take that thousandth of a chance
+away from them."
+
+"You are talking nonsense--stupid, irrational nonsense."  And the
+Senior Surgeon glared at her.
+
+The truth was that he had never forgiven her for getting well.  To have
+had a slip of a girl juggle with the most reliable of scientific data,
+as well as with his own undeniable skill as a diagnostician, and grow
+up normally, healthfully perfect, was insufferable.  He had never quite
+forgiven the Old Senior Surgeon for his share in it.  And to have her
+stand against him and his great desire, now, and actually throw this
+thing in his face, was more than he could endure.  He did not know that
+Margaret MacLean was fighting for what she loved most on earth, the one
+thing that seemed to belong to her, the thing that had been given into
+her keeping by the right of a memory bequeathed to her by the man he
+could not save.  Truth to tell, Margaret MacLean had never quite
+forgiven the Senior Surgeon for this, blameless as she knew him to be.
+
+And so for the space of a quick breath the two faced each other,
+aggressive and accusing.
+
+When the Senior Surgeon turned again to the President and the trustees
+his face wore a faint smile suggestive of amused toleration.
+
+"I hope the time will soon come," he said very distinctly, "when every
+training-school for nurses will bar out the so-called sentimental,
+imaginative type; they do a great deal of harm to the profession.  As I
+was saying, the incurable ward is doing nothing, and we need it for
+surgical cases.  Look over the reports for the last few months and you
+will see how many cases we have had to turn away--twenty in March,
+sixteen in February; and this month it is over thirty--one a day.  Now
+why waste that room for no purpose?"
+
+"Every one of those cases could get into, some of the other hospitals;
+but who would take the incurables?  What would you do with the children
+in Ward C, now?" and Margaret MacLean's voice rang out its challenge.
+
+The Senior Surgeon managed to check an angry explosive and turned to
+the President for succor.
+
+"I think," said that man of charitable parts, "that the meeting is
+getting a trifle too informal for order.  After the Senior Surgeon has
+finished I will call on those whom I feel have something
+of--hmm--importance to say.  In the mean time, my dear young lady, I
+beg of you not to interrupt again.  The children, of course, could all
+be returned to their homes."
+
+"Oh no, they couldn't--"  There was something hypnotic in the
+persistence of the nurse in charge of Ward C.
+
+Usually keenly sensitive, abnormally alive to impressions and
+atmosphere, she shrank from ever intruding herself or her opinions
+where they were not welcome; but now all personal consciousness was
+dead.  She was wholly unaware that she had worked the Senior Surgeon
+into a state where he had almost lost his self-control--a condition
+heretofore unknown in the Senior Surgeon; that she had exasperated the
+President and reduced the trustees to open-mouthed amazement.  The
+lorgnette shook unsteadily in the hand of the Oldest; and, unmindful of
+it all, Margaret MacLean went steadily on:
+
+"Most of them haven't any homes, and the others couldn't live in theirs
+a month.  You don't know how terrible they are--five families in one
+garret, nothing to eat some of the time, father drunk most of the time,
+and filth and foul air all of the time.  That's the kind of homes they
+have--if they have any."
+
+Her outburst was met with a complete silence, ignoring and humiliating.
+After a moment the Senior Surgeon went on, as if no one had spoken.
+
+"Am I not right in supposing that you wish to further, as far as it
+lies within your power, the physical welfare and betterment of the poor
+in this city?  That you wish to do the greatest possible good to the
+greatest number of children?  Ah!  I thought so.  Well, do you not see
+how continuing to keep a number of incurable cases for two or three
+years--or as long as they live--is hindering this?  You are keeping out
+so many more curable cases.  For every case in that ward now we could
+handle ten or fifteen surgical cases each year.  Is that not worth
+considering?"
+
+The trustees nodded approval to one another; it was as if they would
+say, "The Senior Surgeon is always right."
+
+The surgeon himself looked at his watch; he had three minutes left to
+clinch their convictions.  Clearly and admirably he outlined his
+present scope of work; then, stepping into the future, he showed into
+what it might easily grow, had it the room and beds.  He showed
+indisputably what experimental surgery had done for science--what a
+fertile field it was; and wherein lay Saint Margaret's chance to plow a
+furrow more and reap its harvest.  At the end he intimated that he had
+outgrown his present limited conditions there, that unless these were
+changed he should have to betake himself and his operative skill
+elsewhere.
+
+A painfully embarrassing hush closed in on the meeting as the Senior
+Surgeon resumed his seat.  It was broken by an enthusiastic chirp from
+the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee.  She had never attempted to keep
+her interest for him concealed in the bud, causing much perturbation to
+the House Surgeon, and leading the Disagreeable Trustee to remark,
+frequently:
+
+"Good Lord!  She'll throw herself at his head until he loses
+consciousness, and then she'll marry him."
+
+"I think," said she, beaming in the direction of the Senior Surgeon,
+"that it would be perfectly wonderful to be the means of discovering
+some great new thing in surgery.  And as our own great surgeon has just
+said, it is really ridiculous to let a few perfectly incurable cases
+stand in the way of science."
+
+The House Surgeon looked from the beaming profile to the tense, drawn
+outline of mouth and chin belonging to the nurse in charge of Ward C,
+and he found himself wondering if art had ever pictured a crucified
+Madonna, and, if so, why it had not taken Margaret MacLean as a model.
+That moment the President called his name.
+
+[Illustration: The House Surgeon looked from the beaming profile to the
+tense, drawn outline of mouth and chin belonging to the nurse in charge
+of Ward C.]
+
+The House Surgeon was still young and unspoiled enough to blush
+whenever he was consulted.  Moreover, he hated to speak in public,
+knowing, as he did, that he lacked the cultured manner and the polished
+speech of the Senior Surgeon.  He always crawled out of it whenever he
+could, putting some one else more ready of tongue in his place.  He was
+preparing to crawl this time when another look at the white profile in
+front of him brought him to his feet.
+
+"See here," he burst out, bluntly, "we all know the chief is as clever
+as any surgeon in the country, and that he can do anything in the world
+he sets out to do, even to turning Saint Margaret's into a surgical
+laboratory.  But you ought to stop him--you've got to stop him--that is
+your business as trustees of this institution.  We don't need any more
+surgical laboratories just yet--they are getting along fast enough at
+Rockefeller, Johns Hopkins, and the Mayo clinic.  What we scientific
+chaps need to remember--and it ought to be hammered at us three times a
+day, and then some--is that humanity was never put into the world for
+the sole purpose of benefiting science.  We are apt to forget this and
+get to thinking that a few human beings more or less don't count in the
+face of establishing one scientific fact."
+
+He paused just long enough to snatch a breath, and then went racing
+madly on.  "Institutions are apt to forget that they are taking care of
+the souls and minds of human beings as well as their bodies.  It seems
+to me that the man who founded this hospital intended it for humane
+rather than scientific purposes.  His wishes ought to be considered
+now; and I wager he would say, if he were here, to let science go hang
+and keep the incurables."
+
+The House Surgeon sat down, breathing heavily and mopping his forehead.
+It was the longest speech he had ever made, and he was painfully
+conscious of its inadequacy.  The Senior Surgeon excused himself and
+left the room, not, however, until he had given the House Surgeon a
+look pregnant with meaning; Saint Margaret's would hardly be large
+enough to hold them both after the 30th of April.
+
+The trustees moved restlessly in their chairs.  The unexpected had
+happened; there was an internal rupture at Saint Margaret's; and for
+forty years the trustees had boasted of its harmonious behavior and
+kindly feelings.  In a like manner do those dwellers in the shadow of a
+volcano continue to boast of their safety and the harmlessness of the
+crater up to the very hour of its eruption.  And all the while the gray
+wisp of a woman by the door sat silent, her hands still folded on her
+lap.
+
+At last the President rose; he coughed twice before speaking.  "I think
+we will call upon the hospital committee now for their reports.
+Afterward we will take up the question of the incurable ward among the
+trustees--hmm--alone."
+
+Every one sat quietly, almost listlessly, during the reading until
+Margaret MacLean rose, the report for Ward C in her hand.  Then there
+came a raising of heads and a stiffening of backs and a setting of
+chins.  She was very calm, the still calm of the China Sea before a
+typhoon strikes it; when she had finished reading she put the report on
+the chair back of her and faced the President with clasped hands and--a
+smile.
+
+"It's funny," she said, irrelevantly, "for the first time in my life I
+am not afraid here."
+
+And the House Surgeon muttered, under his breath: "Great guns!  That
+mind-string has snapped."
+
+"There is more to the report than I had the courage to write down when
+I was making it out; but I can give it very easily now, if you will not
+mind listening a little longer.  You have always thought that I came
+back to Saint Margaret's because I felt grateful for what you had done
+for me--for the food and the clothes and the care, and later for the
+education that you paid for.  This isn't true.  I am grateful--very
+grateful--but it is a dutiful kind of gratitude which wouldn't have
+brought me back in a thousand years.  I am so sorry to feel this way.
+Perhaps I would not if, in all the years that I was here as a child,
+one of you had shown me a single personal kindness, or some one had
+thought to send me a letter or a message while I was away at school.
+No, you took care of me because you thought it was your duty, and I am
+grateful for the same reason; but it was quite another thing which
+brought me back to Saint Margaret's."
+
+The smile had gone; she was very sober now.  And the House Surgeon,
+still watching the two profiles, suddenly felt his heart settle down to
+a single steady beat.  He wanted to get up that very instant and tell
+the nurse in charge of Ward C what had happened and what he thought of
+her; but instead he dug his hands deep in his pockets.  How in the name
+of the seven continents had he never before realized that she was the
+sweetest, finest, most adorable, and onliest girl in the world, and
+worth a whole board-room full of youngest and prettiest trustees?
+
+"I came back," went on Margaret MacLean, slowly, "really because of the
+Old Senior Surgeon, to stand, as he stood in the days long ago, between
+you and the incurable ward; to shut out--if I could--the little,
+thoughtless, hurting things that you are always saying without being in
+the least bit conscious of them, and to keep the children from wanting
+too much the friendship and loving interest that, somehow, they
+expected from you.  I wanted to try and make them feel that they were
+not case this and case that, abnormally diseased and therefore objects
+of pity and curiosity to be pointed out to sympathetic visitors, but
+children--just children--with a right to be happy and loved.  I wanted
+to fill their minds so full of fun and make-believe that they would
+have to forget about their poor little bodies.  I tried to make you
+feel this and help without putting it--cruelly--into words; but you
+would never understand.  You have never let them forget for a moment
+that they are 'incurables,' any more than you have let me forget that I
+am a--foundling."
+
+She stopped a moment for breath, and the smile came back--a wistfully
+pleading smile.  "I am afraid that last was not in the report.  What I
+want to say is--please keep the incurable ward; take the time to really
+know them--and love them a little.  If you only could you would never
+consider sending them away for a moment.  And if, in addition to the
+splendid care you have given their bodies, you would only help to keep
+their minds and hearts sound and sweet, and shield them against curious
+visitors, why--why--some of them might turn out to be 'a case in a
+thousand.'  Don't you see--can't you see--that they have as much right
+to their scraps of life and happiness--as your children have to their
+complete lives, and that there is no place for them anywhere if Saint
+Margaret's closes her doors?"
+
+With an overwhelming suddenness she became conscious of the attitude of
+the trustees.  She, who was nothing but a foundling and a charity
+patient herself, had dared to pass judgment on them; it was
+inconceivable--it was impertinent--it was beyond all precedent.  Only
+the gray wisp of a woman sat silent, seeming to express nothing.
+Margaret MacLean's cheeks flamed; she shrank into herself, her whole
+being acutely alive to their thoughts.  The scared little-girl look
+came into her face.
+
+"Perhaps--perhaps," she stammered, pitifully, "after what I have said
+you would rather I did not stay on--in charge of Ward C?"
+
+The Dominating Trustee rose abruptly.  "Mr. President, I suggest that
+we act upon Miss MacLean's resignation at once."
+
+"I second the motion," came in a quick bark from the Meanest Trustee,
+while the Oldest Trustee could be heard quoting, "Sharper than a
+serpent's tooth--"
+
+The Executive Trustee rose, looking past Margaret MacLean as he spoke.
+"In view of the fact that we shall possibly discontinue the incurable
+ward, and that Miss MacLean seems wholly unsatisfied with our methods
+and supervision here, I motion that her resignation be accepted now,
+and that she shall be free to leave Saint Margaret's when her month
+shall have expired,"
+
+"I second the motion," came from the Social Trustee, while she added to
+the Calculating, who happened to be sitting next: "So ill-bred.  It
+just shows that a person can never be educated above her station in
+life."
+
+The President rose.  "The motion has been made and seconded.  Will you
+please signify by raising your hands if it is your wish that Miss
+MacLean's resignation be accepted at once?"
+
+Hand after hand went up.  Only the little gray wisp of a woman in the
+chair by the door sat with her hands still folded on her lap.
+
+"It is, so to speak, a unanimous vote."  There was a strong hint of
+approval in the President's voice.  He was a good man; but he belonged
+to that sect which holds as one of the main articles of its faith, "I
+believe in the infallibility of the rich."
+
+"Can any one tell me when Miss MacLean's time expires?"
+
+The person under discussion answered for herself.  "On the last day of
+the month, Mr. President."
+
+"Oh, very well."  He was extremely polite in his manner.  "We thank you
+for your very full and--hmm--comprehensive report.  After to-night you
+are excused from your duties at Saint Margaret's."
+
+The President bowed her courteously out of the board-room, while the
+primroses in the green Devonshire bowl on his desk still nodded
+guilelessly.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+ODDS AND ENDS
+
+Margaret MacLean walked the length of the first corridor; once out of
+sight and hearing, she tore up the stairs, her cheeks crimson and her
+eyes suspiciously moist.  Before she had reached the second flight the
+House Surgeon overtook her.
+
+"I wish," he panted behind her, trying his best to look the big-brother
+way of old--"I wish you'd wait a moment.  This habit of yours of always
+walking up is a beastly one."
+
+"Don't worry about it."  There was a sharp, metallic ring in her voice
+that made it unnatural.  "That's one habit that will soon be broken."
+
+The House Surgeon smiled rather helplessly; inside he was making one of
+the few prayers of his life--a prayer to keep Margaret MacLean free of
+bitterness.  "There is something I want to say to you," he began.
+
+She broke in feverishly: "No, there isn't!  And I don't want to hear
+it.  I don't want to hear you're sorry.  I don't want to hear they'll
+be taken care of--somewhere--somehow.  I think I should scream if you
+told me it was bound to happen--or will all turn out for the best."
+
+"I had no intention of saying any of those things--in fact, they hadn't
+even entered my mind.  What I was going to--"
+
+"Oh, I know.  You were going to remind me of what you said this
+morning.  Almost prophetic, wasn't it?"  And there was a strong touch
+of irony in her laugh.  She turned on him crushingly.  "Perhaps you
+knew it all along.  Perhaps it was your way of letting me down gently."
+
+"See here," said the House Surgeon, bluntly, "that's the second
+disagreeable thing you've said to-day.  I don't think it's quite
+square.  Do you?"
+
+"No!"  Her lips quivered; her hands reached out toward his impulsively.
+"I don't know why I keep saying things I know are not true.  I'm
+perfectly--unforgivably horrid."
+
+As impulsively he took both hands, turned them palm uppermost, and
+kissed them.
+
+[Illustration: Impulsively he took both hands, turned them palm
+uppermost, and kissed them.]
+
+She snatched them away; the crimson in her cheeks deepened.  "Don't,
+please.  Your pity only makes it harder.  Oh, I don't know what has
+happened--here--"  And she struck her breast fiercely.  "If--if they
+send the children away I shall never believe in anything again; the
+part of me that has believed and trusted and been glad will stop--it
+will break all to pieces."  With a hard, dry sob she left him, running
+up the remaining stairs to Ward C.  She did not see his arms reach
+hungrily after her or the great longing in his face.
+
+The House Surgeon turned and went downstairs again.
+
+In the lower corridor he ran across the President, who was looking for
+him.  With much courtesy and circumlocution he was told the thing he
+had been waiting to hear: the board, likewise, had discovered that
+Saint Margaret's had suddenly grown too small to hold both the Senior
+Surgeon and himself.  Strangely enough, this troubled him little; there
+are times in a man's life when even the most momentous of happenings
+shrink into nothing beside the simple process of telling the girl he
+loves that he loves her.
+
+The President was somewhat startled by the House Surgeon's commonplace
+acceptance of the board's decision; and he returned to the board-room
+distinctly puzzled.
+
+Meanwhile Margaret MacLean, having waited outside of Ward C for her
+cheeks to cool and her eyes to dry, opened the door and went in.
+
+Ward C had been fed by the assistant nurse and put to bed; that is, all
+who could limp or wheel themselves about the room were back in their
+cribs, and the others were no longer braced or bolstered up.  As she
+had expected, gloom canopied every crib and cot; beneath, eight small
+figures, covered to their noses, shook with held-back sobs or wailed
+softly.  According to the custom that had unwittingly established
+itself, Ward C was crying itself to sleep.  Not that it knew what it
+was crying about, it being merely a matter of atmosphere and unstrung
+nerves; but that is cause enough to turn the mind of a sick child all
+awry, twisting out happiness and twisting in peevish, fretful feelings.
+
+She stood by the door, unnoticed, looking down the ward.  Pancho lay
+wound up in his blanket like a giant chrysalis, rolling in silent
+misery.  Sandy was stretched as straight and stiff as if he had been
+"laid out"; his eyes were closed, and there was a stolid,
+expressionless set to his features.  Margaret MacLean knew that it
+betokened much internal disturbance.  Susan, ex-philosopher, was
+sobbing aloud, pulling with rebellious fingers at the pieces of iron
+that kept her head where nature had planned it.  The Apostles gripped
+hands and moaned in unison, while Peter hugged his blanket, seeking
+thereby some consolation for the dispelled Toby.  Toby persistently
+refused to be conjured up on Trustee Days.
+
+Only Bridget was alert and watchful.  One hand was slipped through the
+bars of Rosita's crib, administering comforting pats to the rhythmic
+croon of an Irish reel.  Every once in a while her eyes would wander to
+the neighboring cots with the disquiet of an over-troubled mother; the
+only moments of real unhappiness or worry Bridget ever knew were those
+which brought sorrow to the ward past her power of mending.
+
+To Margaret MacLean, standing there, it seemed unbearable--as if life
+had suddenly become too sinister and cruel to strike at souls so little
+and helpless as these.  There were things one could never explain in
+terms of God.  She found herself wondering if that was why the Senior
+Surgeon worshiped science; and she shivered.
+
+The room had become repellent; it was a sepulchral place entombing all
+she had lost.  In the midst of the dusk and gloom her mind groped
+about--after its habit--for something cheerful, something that would
+break the colorless monotone of the room and change the atmosphere.  In
+a flash she remembered the primroses; and the remembrance brought a
+smile.
+
+"They're nothing but charlatans," she thought, "but the children will
+never find that out, and they'll be something bright for them to wake
+up to in the morning."
+
+This was what sent her down the stairs again, just as the board meeting
+adjourned.
+
+Now the board adjourned with thumbs down--signifying that the incurable
+ward was no more, as far as the future of Saint Margaret's was
+concerned.  The trustees stirred in their chairs with a comfortable
+relaxing of joint and muscle, as if to say, "There, that is a piece of
+business well despatched; nothing like methods of conservation and
+efficiency, you know."  Only the little gray wisp of a woman by the
+door sat rigid, her hands still folded on her lap.
+
+The Oldest Trustee had just remarked to the Social Trustee that all the
+things gossip had said of the widow of the Richest Trustee were
+undoubtedly true--she was a nonentity--when the Senior Surgeon dropped
+in.  This was according to the President's previous request.  That
+gentleman of charitable parts had implied that there would undoubtedly
+be good news and congratulations awaiting him.  This did not mean that
+the board intended to slight its duty and fail to consider the matter
+of the incurables with due conscientiousness--the board was as strong
+for conscience as for conservation.  It merely went to show that the
+fate of Ward C had been preordained from the beginning; and that the
+President felt wholly justified in requesting the presence of the
+Senior Surgeon at the end of the meeting.
+
+His appearance called forth such a laudatory buzzing of tongues and
+such a cordial shaking of hands that one might have easily mistaken the
+meeting for a successful political rally or a religious revival.  The
+Youngest and Prettiest Trustee fluttered about him, chirping ecstatic
+expletives, while the Disagreeable Trustee watched her and growled to
+himself.
+
+"So splendid," she chirped, "the unanimous indorsement of the board--at
+least, practically unanimous."  And she eyed the widow of the Richest
+Trustee accusingly.
+
+"The incurable ward and Margaret MacLean have really been a terrible
+responsibility, haven't they?  I can't help feeling it will mean quite
+a load off our minds."  It was the Social Trustee who spoke, and she
+followed it with a little sigh of relief.
+
+The sigh was echoed twice--thrice--about the room.  Then the Meanest
+Trustee barked out:
+
+"I hope it will mean a load off our purses.  That ward and that nurse
+have always wanted things, and had them, that they had no business
+wanting.  I hope we can save a substantial sum now for the endowment
+fund."
+
+The Oldest Trustee smiled tolerantly.  "Of course it isn't as if the
+cases were not hopeless.  I can see no object, however, in making
+concessions and sacrifices to keep in the hospital cases that cannot be
+cured; and, no doubt, we can place them most satisfactorily in state
+institutions for orphans or deficients."
+
+At that moment the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee spied the primroses
+on the President's desk--she had been too engrossed in the surgical
+profession to observe much apart.  "I believe I'm going to decorate
+you."  And she dimpled up at the Senior Surgeon, coquettishly.
+Selecting one of the blossoms with great care, she drew it through the
+buttonhole in his lapel.  "See, I'm decorating you with the Order of
+the Golden Primrose--for brilliancy."  Whereupon she dropped her eyes
+becomingly.
+
+"Good Lord!" muttered the Disagreeable Trustee to the President, his
+eye focused on the two.  "She'll fetch him this time.  And she'll have
+him so hypnotized with all this chirping and dancing business that
+he'll be perfectly helpless in a month, or I miss--"
+
+The Youngest and Prettiest Trustee looked up just in time to intercept
+that eye, and she attacked it with a saucy little stare.  "I believe
+you are both jealous," she flung over her shoulder.  But the very next
+moment she was dimpling again.  "I believe I am going to decorate
+everybody--including myself.  I'm sure we all deserve it for our loyal
+support of Science."  She, likewise, always spelled it with a capital,
+having acquired the habit from the Senior Surgeon.
+
+She snatched a cluster of primroses from the green Devonshire bowl; and
+one was fastened securely in the lapel or frill of every trustee, not
+even omitting the gray wisp of a woman by the door.
+
+And so it came to pass that every member of the board of Saint
+Margaret's Free Hospital for Children went home on May Eve with one of
+the faeries' own flowers tucked somewhere about his or her person.
+Moreover, they went home at precisely three minutes and twenty-two
+seconds past seven by the clock on the tower--the astronomical time for
+the sun to go down on the 30th of April.  Crack went all the
+combination locks on all the faery raths, spilling the Little People
+over all the world; and creak went the gates of Tir-na-n'Og, swinging
+wide open for wandering mortals to come back.
+
+As the trustees left the hospital the Senior Surgeon turned into the
+cross-corridor for his case, still gay with his Order of the Golden
+Primrose; and there, at the foot of the stairs, he ran into Margaret
+MacLean.  They faced each other for the merest fraction of a breath,
+both conscious and embarrassed; then she glimpsed the flower in his
+coat and a cry of surprise escaped her.
+
+He smiled, almost foolishly.  "I thought they--it--looked rather pretty
+and--spring-like," he began, by way of explanation.  His teeth ground
+together angrily; he sounded absurd, and he knew it.  Furthermore, it
+was inexcusable of her to corner him in this fashion.
+
+Now Margaret MacLean knew well enough that he would never have
+discovered the prettiness of anything by himself--not in a century of
+springtimes, and she sensed the truth.
+
+"Did she decorate you?" she inquired, with an irritating little curl of
+her lips.  The Senior Surgeon's self-confessed blush lent speed to her
+tongue.  "I think I might be privileged to ask what it was for.  You
+see, I presented the flowers to the board meeting.  Was it for
+self-sacrifice?"  Her eyes challenged his.
+
+"You are capable of talking more nonsense and being more impertinent
+than any nurse I have ever known.  May I pass?"  His eyes returned her
+challenge, blazing.
+
+But she never moved; the mind-string once broken, there seemed to be no
+limit to the thoughts that could come tumbling off the end of her
+tongue.  Her eyes went back to the flower in his coat.
+
+"Perhaps you would like to know that I bought those this morning
+because they seemed the very breath of spring itself--a bit of promise
+and gladness.  I thought they would keep the day going right."
+
+"Well, they have--for me."  And the Senior Surgeon could not resist a
+look of triumph.
+
+"The trustees"--she drew in a quick breath and put out a steadying hand
+on the banisters--"you mean--they have given up the incurable ward?"
+
+He nodded.  His voice took on a more genial tone.  He felt he could
+generously afford to be pleasant and patient toward the one who had not
+succeeded.  "It was something that was bound to happen sooner or later.
+Can't you see that yourself?  But I am sorry, very sorry for you."
+
+Suddenly, and for the first time in their long sojourn together in
+Saint Margaret's, he became wholly conscious of the girl before him.
+He realized that Margaret MacLean had grown into a vital and vitalizing
+personality--a force with which those who came in contact would have to
+reckon.  She stood before him now, frozen into a gray, accusing figure.
+
+"Are you ill?" he found himself asking.
+
+"No."
+
+He shifted his weight uneasily to the other foot.  "Is there anything
+you want?"
+
+Her face softened into the little-girl look.  Her eyes brimmed with a
+sadness past remedy.  "What a funny question from you--you, who have
+taken from me the only thing I ever let myself want--the love and
+dependence of those children.  Success, and having whatever you want,
+are such common things with you, that you must count them very cheap;
+but you can't judge what they mean to others--or what they may cost
+them."
+
+"As I said before, I am sorry, very sorry you have lost your position
+here; but you have no one but yourself to blame for that.  I should
+have been very glad to have you remain in the new surgical ward; you
+are one of the best operative nurses I ever had."  He added this in all
+justice to her; and to mitigate, if he could, his own feeling of
+discomfort.
+
+Margaret MacLean smiled grimly.  "Thank you.  I was not referring to
+the loss of my position, however; that matters very little."
+
+"It should matter."  The voice of the Senior Surgeon became instantly
+professional.  "Every nurse should put her work, satisfactorily and
+scientifically executed, before everything else.  That is where you are
+radically weak.  Let me remind you that it is your sole business to
+look after the physical betterment of your patients--nothing else; and
+the sooner you give up all this sentimental, fanciful nonsense the
+sooner you will succeed."
+
+"You are wrong.  I should never succeed that way--never.  Some cases
+may need only the bodily care--maybe; but you are a very poor doctor,
+after all, if you think that is all that children need--or half the
+grown-ups.  There are more people ailing with mind-sickness and
+heart-sickness, as well as body-sickness, than the world would guess,
+and you've just got to nurse the whole of them.  You will succeed,
+whether you ever find this out or not; but you will miss a great deal
+out of your life."
+
+Anger was rekindling in the eyes of the Senior Surgeon; and Margaret
+MacLean, seeing, grew gentle--all in a minute.
+
+"Oh, I wish I could make you understand.  You have always been so
+strong and well and sufficient unto yourself, it's hard, I suppose, to
+be able to think or see life through the iron slats of a hospital crib.
+Just make believe you had been a little crippled boy, with nothing
+belonging to you, nothing back of you to remember, nothing happy coming
+to you but what the nurses or the doctors or the trustees thought to
+bring.  And then make believe you were cured and grew up.  Wouldn't you
+remember what life had been in that hospital crib, and wouldn't you
+fight to make it happier for the children coming after you?  Why, the
+incurable ward was my whole life--home, family, friends, work;
+everything wrapped up in nine little crippled bodies.  It was all I
+asked or expected of life.  Oh, I can tell you that a foundling, with
+questionable ancestry, with no birth-record or blood-inheritance to
+boast of, claims very little of the every-day happiness that comes to
+other people.  And yet I was so glad to be alive--and strong and needed
+by those children that I could have been content all my life with just
+that."
+
+The Senior Surgeon cleared his throat, preparatory to making some
+comment, but the nurse raised a silencing finger.
+
+"Wait! there is one thing more.  What you have taken from me is the
+smallest part.  The children pay double--treble as much.  I pay only
+with my heart and faith; they pay with their whole lives.  Remember
+that when you install your new surgical ward--and don't reckon it too
+cheap."
+
+She left him still clearing his throat; and when she came out of the
+board-room a few seconds later with the green Devonshire bowl in her
+arms he had disappeared.
+
+Margaret MacLean found Ward C as she had left it.  As she was putting
+down the primroses, on the table in the center of the room she caught
+Bridget's white face beckoning to her eagerly.  Softly she went over to
+her cot.
+
+"What is it, dear?"
+
+"Miss Peggie darlin', if ye'd only give me leave to talk quiet I'd have
+the childher cheered up in no time."
+
+"Would you promise not to make any noise?"
+
+"Promise on m' heart!  I'll have 'em all asleep quicker 'n nothin'.  Ye
+see, just."
+
+"Very well.  I'll be back after supper to see if the promise has been
+kept."  She stooped, brushed away the curls, and kissed the little
+white forehead.  "Oh, Bridget!  Bridget! no matter what happens, always
+remember to keep happy!"
+
+"Sure an' I will," agreed Bridget; and she watched the nurse go out,
+much puzzled.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE PRIMROSE RING
+
+Bridget, oldest of the ward, general caretaker and best beloved,
+hunched herself up on her pillows until she was sitting reasonably
+straight, and clapped her hands.  "Whist!" she called, softly.  "Whist
+there, all o' ye!  What's ailin'?"
+
+Eight woebegone pairs of eyes turned in her direction.
+
+"Ye needn't be afeared o' speakin'.  Miss Peggie give us leave to talk
+quiet."
+
+"It's them trusters," wailed Peter.  "They come a-peekin' round to see
+we don't get well."
+
+"They alters calls us 'uncurables,'" moaned Susan.
+
+"Pig of water-drinking Americans!" came from the last cot.
+
+"Ye shut up, Michael!  Who did ye ever hear say that?"
+
+"Mine fader."  And Michael spat in a perfect imitation thereof.
+
+"Well, don't ye ever say it ag'in--do ye hear?  Miss Peggie's American,
+and so's the House Surgeon, an' it's the next best thing to bein'
+Irish--which every one can't be, the Lord knows.  Now them trusters is
+heathen, an' they don't know nothin' more'n heathen, an' we ought to be
+easy on 'em for bein' so ignorant."
+
+"They ken us 'll nae mair be gettin' weel," said Sandy, mournfully.
+
+"Aw, ye're talkin' foolish entirely.  What do ye think that C on the
+door means?"
+
+A silence, significant of much brain-racking, followed.
+
+"C stands for children," announced Susan, triumphantly.
+
+"Aye, it does that, but there be's somethin' more."
+
+"Crutches," suggested Pancho, tentatively.
+
+"Aw, go on wid ye," laughed Bridget.  "Ye're 'way off."  She paused a
+moment impressively.  "C means 'cured.'  '_Childher Cured_,' that's
+what!  Now all we've got to do is to forget trusters an' humps an'
+pains an' them disagreeable things, an' think o' somethin' pleasant."
+
+"Ain't nothin' pleasant ter think of in er horspital," wailed John, the
+present disheartenment clouding over all past happiness.
+
+"Ain't, neither," agreed James.
+
+"Aye, there be," contradicted Sandy.  "Dinna ye ken the wee gray woman
+'at cam creepity round an' smiled?"
+
+"She was nice," said Susan, with obvious approval.  "Do ye think, now,
+she might ha' been me aunt?"
+
+A chorus of positive negation settled all further speculation, while
+Bridget bluntly inquired.  "Honest to goodness, Susan, do ye think the
+likes o' ye could belong to the likes o' that?"
+
+Pancho broke the painful silence by reverting to the original topic in
+hand.  "Mi' Peggie pleasant too," he suggested, smiling adorably.
+
+"But we've not got either of 'em no longer, so they're no good now,"
+Peter unfortunately reminded every one.
+
+"Don't ye know there be's always somethin' pleasant to think about if
+ye just hunt round a bit, an' things an' feelin's never get that bad ye
+can't squeeze out some pleasantment.  Don't ye mind the time the
+trusters had planned to give us all paint-boxes for Christmas, an' half
+of us not able to hold a brush, let alone paint things, an' Miss Peggie
+blarneyed them round into givin' us books?  Don't ye mind?  Now we've
+got somethin' pleasant here, right now--"  And Bridget smiled.
+
+"What?"
+
+"May Eve."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"'Tain't nothin'," said Susan, sliding back disappointedly on her
+pillow.
+
+"Sure an' it is," said Bridget; "it's somethin' grand."
+
+"'Tain't nothin'," persisted Susan, "but a May party in Cen'ral Park.
+Every one takes somethin' ter eat in a box, an' the boys play ball an'
+the girls dance round, an' the cops let you run on the grass.  I knows
+all about it, fer my sister Katie was 'queen' onct."
+
+"We couldn't play ball, ner run on the grass, ner anything," said
+Peter, regretfully.
+
+"'Tisn't what Susan says at all," said Bridget, by way of consolation.
+"If ye'll harken to me a minute, just, I'll be afther tellin' ye what
+it is."
+
+Ward C became instantly silent--hopefully expectant; Bridget had led
+them into pleasant places too often for them not to believe in her
+implicitly and do what she said.
+
+"May Eve," began Bridget, slowly, "is the night o' the year when the
+faeries come throopin' out o' the ground to fly about on twigs o' thorn
+an' dance to the music o' the faery pipers.  They're all dthressed in
+wee green jackets an' caps, an' 'tis grand luck to any that sees them.
+And all the wishes good childher make on May Eve are sure to come
+thrue."  She stopped a moment.  "Let's make believe; let's make
+believe--"  Her eyes fell on the primroses, and for the first time she
+recognized them.  "Holy Saint Bridget! them's faery primroses!"
+
+Ward C was properly impressed.  Eight little figures sat up as straight
+as they could; eight pairs of eager eyes followed Bridget's pointing
+finger and gazed in speechless wonder at the green Devonshire bowl.
+
+"Do ye think, Sandy, that ye could scrooch out o' bed an' hump yerself
+over to them?  If Pether tries he's sure to tumble over, an' some one
+might hear."
+
+Sandy looked at the flowers without enthusiasm.  "Phat are ye wantin'
+wi' 'em?"
+
+"I'll tell ye when ye get there.  Just thry; ye'll be yondther afore ye
+know it."
+
+Cautiously Sandy rolled over on his stomach and pushed two shrunken
+little legs out from the covers.  Putting them gingerly to the floor,
+he stood up, holding fast to the bed; then working his way from bed to
+bed, he reached the table at last, spurred on by Bridget's irresistible
+blarney:
+
+"Sure ye're walkin' grand, Sandy.  I never saw any one puttin' one leg
+past another smarther than what ye are.  Ye'd fetch up to Aberdeen i'
+no time if ye kept on at the pace ye are goin'."
+
+Pride lies above pain; and Sandy held his head very high as he steadied
+himself by the table and looked toward Bridget for further orders.
+
+[Illustration: Sandy held his head very high as he steadied himself by
+the table and looked toward Bridget for further orders.]
+
+"Phat wull a do the noo?" he asked.
+
+In the excitement Bridget had pulled herself to the foot of the cot;
+and there, eyes shining and cheeks growing pinker and pinker, she held
+her breath while the pleasantest thought of all shaped itself somewhere
+under the shock of red curls.
+
+"Ye could never guess in a hundthred years what I was thinkin' this
+minute," she burst forth, ecstatically.
+
+Eight mouths opened wide in anticipated wonder; but no one thought of
+guessing.
+
+"I'm thinkin'--I'm thinkin' we could make a primrose ring the night.
+Is there any knowledgeable one among ye that knows aught of a primrose
+ring?"
+
+Eight heads shook an emphatic negative.
+
+"Aye, wasn't I sayin' so!  Well, sure, a primrose ring is a faery ring;
+an' any one that makes it an' steps inside, wishin' a wish, is like to
+have anythin' at all happen them afore they steps out of it ag'in."
+
+Eight breaths were drawn in and sighed out with the shivering delight
+that always accompanies that feeling which lies between fear and
+desire; likewise, eight delicious thrills zigzagged up eight cold
+little spines.  Then Bridget shook a commanding finger at Sandy.
+
+"Ye take them flowers out o' the pot an' dthrop them, one by one, till
+ye have the ground covered from the head of Pancho's bed to the tail o'
+Michael's.  'Twon't make the whole of a ring, but if ye crook it out i'
+the middle to the wall yondther, 'twill be like enough."
+
+With a doubtful eye Sandy spanned the distance.  "Na--na.  Gien a
+hustled a wud be a dee'd loonie afore a had 'em spilled."
+
+"Aw, go on!" chorused the watchers.
+
+"Thry, just," urged Bridget, "an' we'll sing 'Onward, Christian
+Soldier' to hearten ye up."
+
+Eight shrill voices piped out the tune; and Sandy, caught by its
+martial spirit, before he knew it was limping a circle about the beds,
+marking his trail with golden blossoms.  Luckily for Ward C, the nurse
+on duty during the dinner-hour was in the medical ward, with the door
+closed.  And when she came back to her listening post in the corridor
+the last word had been sung, the last flower dropped, and Sandy was in
+his cot again, stretching tired little legs under the covers.
+
+Perhaps the geometrician, or the accurate-minded reader, will doubt
+whether the primrose ring was made at all--seeing that the wall of Ward
+C cut off nearly thirty degrees of it.  But in the world of fancy
+geometrical accuracy does not hold; and the only important thing is
+believing that the ring has been made.  I have known of a few who could
+step inside the faery circle whenever they willed, and without a
+visible primrose about; but for most of us the blossoms are needed to
+make the enchantment.
+
+This is one of the heritages that come to those who are lucky enough to
+dwell much in the world of fancy.  They can wish for things and possess
+them, and enjoy them without actually grasping them with their two
+hands and saying, "These are my personal belongings."  Material things
+are rather a nuisance, on the whole, for they have to be dusted and
+kept in order, repatched or repainted; and if one wishes to carry them
+about there are always the bother of packing and the danger of losing.
+But these other possessions are different--they are with us wherever we
+go and whenever we want them--to-day, to-morrow, or for eternity.
+
+"If we had the wee red wishin'-cap," said Bridget, thoughtfully, "we'd
+not have to be waitin' for what's likely to happen.  We could just wish
+ourselves into Tir-na-n'Og."
+
+"What's that?" demanded Peter.
+
+"Tis the place the faeries live in, an' 'tis in Irelan'.  Sure, 'tis
+easy gettin' the cap," continued Bridget, with conviction.  "All ye
+need do is to say afther me, 'I wish--I wish for the wee red cap,' an'
+ye have it."
+
+Bridget extended her hands, palms upward, and the others followed her
+example; and together they whispered: "I wish--I wish for the wee red
+cap."
+
+Immediately Bridget's hands closed over a cubic inch of atmosphere, and
+she cried, exultantly, "Hold on to it tight an' slip it on your head
+quick--afore it gets from ye!"
+
+Only seven pairs of hands obeyed--Michael protested.
+
+"I have nothinks got," he said, disgustedly.
+
+"Shut up!"  And Bridget shook a menacing fist at him.  "He's foolish
+entirely.  He thinks he hasn't anythin' foreby he can't see it.  Now,
+all together, 'We wish--'"
+
+"Can we go 'thout any clothes?" interrupted Susan.  "We'd feel awful
+queer in nightshirts."
+
+"Don't ye worry, darlin'.  Like as not when we get there the queen
+herself 'll open a monsthrous big chest where they keeps all the faery
+clothes, an' let us choose anythin' at all we wants to wear."
+
+"Pants?" queried Peter, eagerly.
+
+"Sure, an' silk dresses an' straw hats wi' ribbon on them, an--"
+
+"Will shoes in the chest be?"  Pancho was very anxious; he had never
+had a pair of shoes in all his six years.
+
+Bridget beamed.  "Not i' the chest; but I'll be tellin' ye how ye'll
+come by them.  When we get there we'll look about for a
+blackthorn-bush--an' there--like as not--in undther it--will be a wee
+man wi' a leather apron across his knee--the leprechaun, big as life!"
+
+"What's him?"
+
+"Faith I'm tellin' ye--'tis the faery cobbler.  An' the minute he slaps
+the tail of his eye on us he'll sing out: 'Hello, Pancho an' Sandy an'
+Susan an' all o' yez.  I've your boots finished, just.'  An' wi' that
+he'll fetch down the nine pairs an' hand them round."
+
+A sigh of blissful contentment started from the cot by the door,
+burbled down the length of the ward, and vanished out of the window.
+Is there anything dearer to the pride of a child than boots--new boots?
+
+Bridget took up the dropped thread and went on.  "An' afther that the
+leprechaun reaches for his crock o' gold an' pulls out a penny.  Ye can
+buy anythin' i' the whole world wi' a faery penny."
+
+"Anythinks!" said Michael, skeptically.
+
+"That's what I said."
+
+"Could yer buy a dorg?" Peter asked, opening one renegade eye.
+
+"Sure--a million dogs."
+
+"Don't want a million.  Want jus' one real live black dorg--named
+Toby--wiv yeller spots an' half-legs--an' long ears--an' a stand-up
+tail--an' legs--an' long--long--long--"  The renegade eye closed tight
+and Peter was smiling at something afar off.
+
+An antiphonal chorus of yawns broke the hush that followed, while
+Bridget worked herself back under the covers.
+
+"A ken the penny micht be buyin' a hame," came in a drowsy voice from
+Sandy's crib.  "'Twad be a hame in Aberdeen--wi' trees an' flo'ers an'
+mickle wee creepit things--an'--Miss Peggie--an'--us--"
+
+"Sure, an' it could be buyin' a grand home in Irelan', the same,"
+Bridget beamed; and then she added, struck forcibly with an
+afterthought: "But what would be the sense of a home anywheres but
+here--furninst--within easy reach of a crutch or a wheeled chair?  Tell
+me that!"
+
+Sandy grunted ambiguously; and Bridget took up again the thread of her
+recounting.
+
+"Ye could never be guessin' half o' the sthrange adventures we'll be
+havin'!  Like as not Sandy 'll be gettin' his hump lifted off him.  I
+mind the story--me mother often told it me.  There was a humpy back in
+Irelan', once, who went always about wi' song in his heart an' another
+on his lips; an' one day he fetched up inside a faery rath.  The pipers
+were pipin' an' the Wee People was dancin', an' while they was dancin'
+they was singin' like this: 'Monday an' Tuesday--an' Monday an'
+Tuesday--an' Monday an' Tuesday'--an' it sounded all jerky and bad.
+'That's a terrible poor song,' says the humpy, speakin' out plain.
+'What's that?' says the faeries, stoppin' their dance an' gatherin'
+round him.  ''Tis mortal poor music ye are making' says the humpy
+ag'in.  'Can ye improve it any?' asked the faeries.  'I can that,' says
+the humpy.  'Add Wednesday to it an' ye'll have double as good a song.'
+An' when the faeries tried it it was so pretty, an' they was so
+pleased, they took the hump off him."
+
+Sandy had curled up like a kitten; his eyes were shut, and he was
+smiling, too.  Every one was very quiet; only Rosita moved, reaching
+out a frightened hand to Bridget.
+
+"Fwaid," she lisped.  "All dark--fwaid to do."
+
+"Whist, darlin', ye needn't be afeared.  Bridget 'll hold tight to your
+hand all the way.  An' the stars will be out there makin' it bright--so
+bright--foreby the stars are the faeries' old rush-lights.  When
+they're all burned out, just, they throw them up i' the sky--far as
+ever they can--an' God reaches out an' catches them.  Then He sets them
+all a-burnin' ag'in, so's the wee angel babies can see what road to be
+takin'.  An' Sandy 'll lose his hump--an' Michael 'll get a new
+heart--maybe--that won't bump--an' they'll put all the trusters in
+cages--all but the nice Wee One--cages like they have in the circus--
+An' they'll never get out to pesther us--never--never--no--more--"
+Bridget's voice trailed off into the distance, carrying with it the
+last of Rosita's fearing consciousness.
+
+Ward C had suddenly become empty--empty except for a row of tumbled
+beds and nine little tired-out, cast-off bodies.  They had been shed as
+easily as a boy slips out of his dusty, uncomfortable overalls on a
+late sultry afternoon, and leaves them behind him on a shady bank,
+while he plunges, head first, into the cool, dark waters of the
+swimming-pool just below him, which have been calling and calling and
+calling.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+AND BEYOND
+
+What happened beyond the primrose ring is, perhaps, rather a
+crazy-quilt affair, having to be patched out of the squares and
+three-cornered bits of Fancy which the children remembered to bring
+back with them.  I have tried to piece them together into a fairly
+substantial pattern; but, of course, it can be easily ripped out and
+raveled into nothing.  So I beg of you, on the children's account, to
+handle it gently, for they believe implicitly in the durability of the
+fabric.
+
+Sandy remembered the beginning of it--the plunge straight across the
+primrose ring into the River of Make-Believe; and how they paddled over
+like puppies--one after another.  It was perfectly safe to swim, even
+if you had never swum before; and the only danger was for those who
+might stop in the middle of the river and say, or think, "A dinna
+believe i' faeries."  Whoever should do this would sink like a stone,
+going down, down, down until he struck his bed with a thud and woke,
+crying.
+
+It was starlight in Tir-na-n'Og--just as Bridget had said it would
+be--only the stars were far bigger and brighter.  The children stood on
+the white, pebbly beach and shook themselves dry; while Bridget showed
+them how to pull down their nightshirts to keep them from shrinking,
+and how to wring out their faery caps to keep the wishes from growing
+musty or mildewed.  After that they met the faery ferryman,
+who--according to Sandy--"wore a wee kiltie o' reeds, an' a tammie made
+frae a loch-lily pad wi' a cat-o'-nine-tail tossel, lukin' sae ilk the
+brae ye wad niver ken he was a mon glen ye dinna see his legs,
+walkin'."  He told them how he ferried over all the "old bodies" who
+had grown feeble-hearted and were too afraid to swim.
+
+It was Pancho who remembered best about the leprechaun--how they found
+him sitting cross-legged under the blackthorn-bush with a leather apron
+spread over his knees, and how he had called out--just as Bridget had
+said he would:
+
+"Hello, Pancho and Susan and Sandy and all!"
+
+"Have you any shoes got?" Pancho shouted.
+
+The faery cobbler nodded and pointed with his awl to the branches above
+his head; there hung nine pairs of little green shoes, curled at the
+toes, with silver buckles, all stitched and soled and ready to wear.
+
+"Will they fit?" asked Pancho, breathlessly.
+
+"Faery shoes always fit.  Now reach them down and hand them round."
+
+This Pancho did with despatch.  Nine pairs of little white feet were
+thrust joyously into the green shoes and buckled in tight.  On looking
+back, Pancho was quite sure that this was the happiest moment of his
+life.  The children squealed and clapped their hands and cried:
+
+"They fit fine!"
+
+"Shoes is grand to wear!"
+
+"I feel skippy."
+
+"I feel dancy."
+
+Whereupon they all jumped to their feet and with arms wide-spread, hand
+clasping hand, they ringed about the cobbler and the thorn-bush.  They
+danced until there was not a scrap of breath left in their bodies; then
+they tumbled over and rolled about like a nest of young puppies, while
+the cobbler laughed and laughed until he held his sides with the aching.
+
+It was here that everybody remembered about the faery penny; in fact,
+that was the one thing remembered by all.  And this is hardly strange;
+if you or I ever possessed a faery penny--even in the confines of a
+primrose ring--we should never forget it.
+
+It was Bridget, however, who reminded the leprechaun.  "Ye haven't by
+any chance forgotten somethin' ye'd like to be rememberin', have ye?"
+she asked, diplomatically.
+
+"I don't know," and the cobbler pulled his thinking-lock.  "What might
+it be?"
+
+"Sure, it might be a faery penny," and Bridget eyed him anxiously.
+
+The cobbler slapped his apron and laughed again.  "To be sure it
+might--and I came near forgetting it."
+
+He reached, over and pulled up a tuft of sod at his side; for all one
+could have told, it might have been growing there, neighbor to all the
+other sods.  Underneath was a dark little hole in the ground; and out
+of this he brought a brown earthen crock.
+
+"The crock o' gold!" everybody whispered, awesomely.
+
+"Aye, the crock o' gold," agreed the cobbler.  "But I keep it hidden,
+for there is naught that can make more throuble--sometimes."  He raised
+the lid and took out a single shining piece.  "Will one do ye?"
+
+Nine heads nodded eloquently, while nine hands were stretched out
+eagerly to take it.
+
+"Bide a bit.  Ye can't all be carrying it at the one time.  I think ye
+had best choose a treasurer."
+
+Bridget was elected unanimously.  She took the penny and deposited it
+in the heel of her faery shoe.
+
+"Mind," said the leprechaun as they were turning to go, "ye mind a
+faery penny will buy but the one thing.  See to it that ye are all
+agreed on the same thing."
+
+The children chorused an assent and skipped merrily away.  And here is
+where Peter's patch joins Pancho's.
+
+They had not gone far over the silvery-green meadow--three
+shadow-lengths, perhaps--when they saw something coming toward them.
+It was coming as fast as half-legs could carry it; and it was wagging a
+_long_, stand-up tail.  Everybody guessed in an instant that it was
+Peter's "black dorg wiv yeller spots."
+
+"Who der thunk it?  Who der thunk it?" shouted Peter, jumping up and
+down; and then he knelt on the grass, his arms flung wide open, while
+he called: "Toby, Toby!  Here's me!"
+
+Of course Toby knew Peter--that goes without saying.  He barked and
+wagged his tail and licked Peter's face; in fact, he did every
+dog-thing Peter had longed for since Peter's mind had first fashioned
+him.
+
+"Well," and Bridget put both arms akimbo and smiled a smile of complete
+satisfaction, "what was I a-tellin' ye, anyways?  Faith, don't it beat
+all how things come thrue--when ye think 'em pleasant an' hard enough?"
+
+Peter remembered the wonderful way their feet skimmed over the
+ground--"'most like flyin'."  Not a blade of grass bent under their
+weight, not a grain of sand was dislodged; and--more marvelous than
+all--there was no tiredness, no aching of joint or muscle.  All of
+which was bound to happen when feet were shod with faery shoes.
+
+"See me walk!" cried some one.
+
+"See me run!" cried some one else.
+
+"See me hop and jump!"
+
+And Bridget added, "Faith, 'tis as easy as lyin' in bed."
+
+They were no longer alone; hosts of Little People passed them, going in
+the same direction.  Peter said most of them rode "straddle-legs" on
+night birds or moths, while some flew along on a funny thing that was
+horse before and weeds behind.  I judge this must have been the
+buchailin buidhe or benweed, which the faeries bewitch and ride the
+same as a witch mounts her broomstick.
+
+And everybody who passed always called out in the friendliest way,
+"Hello, Peter!" or "Hello, Bridget!" or "The luck rise with ye!" which
+is the most common of all greetings in Tir-na-n'Og.
+
+"Gee!" was Peter's habitual comment after the telling, "maybe it wasn't
+swell havin' 'em know us--names an' all.  Betcher life we wasn't cases
+to them--no, siree!"
+
+It was Susan who remembered best how everything looked--Susan, who had
+never been to the country in all her starved little life--that is, if
+one excepts the times Margaret MacLean had taken her on the Ward C
+"special."  She told so well how all the trees and flowers were
+fashioned that it was an easy matter putting names to them.
+
+In the center of Tir-na-n'Og towered a great hill; but instead of its
+being capped with peak or rocks it was gently hollowed at the top, as
+though in the beginning, when it was thrown up molten from the depths
+of somewhere, a giant thumb had pressed it down and smoothed it round
+and even.  All about the brim of it grew hawthorns and rowans and
+hazel-trees.  In the grass, everywhere, were thousands and millions of
+primroses, heart's-ease, and morning-glories; all crowded together, so
+Susan said, like the patterns on the Persian carpet in the board-room.
+It was all so beautiful and faeryish and heart-desired that "yer'd have
+said it wasn't real if yer hadn't ha' knowed it was."
+
+The children stood on the brink of the giant hollow and clapped their
+hands for the very joy of seeing it all; and there--a little man
+stepped up to them and doffed his cap.  The queen wanted them--she was
+waiting for them by the throne that very minute; and the little man was
+to bring them to her.
+
+Now that throne--according to Susan--was nothing like the thrones one
+finds in stories or Journeys through palaces to see.  It was not cold,
+hard, or forbidding; instead, it was as soft and green and pillowy as
+an inflated golf-bunker might be, and just high and comfortable enough
+for the baby faeries to discover it and go to sleep there whenever they
+felt tired.  The throne was full of them when the children looked, and
+some one was tumbling them off like so many kittens.
+
+"That is the queen," said the little man, pointing.
+
+The children stood on tiptoes and craned their necks the better to see;
+but it was not until they had come quite close that they saw that her
+dress was gray, and her hair was gray, and she was small, and her face
+was like--
+
+"Bless me if it ain't!" shouted Susan in amazement.  "It's Sandy's wee
+creepity woman!"
+
+The queen smiled when she saw them.  She reached out her hands and
+patted theirs in turn, asking, "Now what is your name, dearie?"
+
+"Are ye sure ye're the queen?" gasped Bridget.
+
+"Maybe I am--and maybe I'm not," was the answer.
+
+"Then ye been't the wee gray woman--back yonder?" asked Sandy.
+
+"Maybe I'm not--and maybe I am."  And then she laughed.  "Dear
+children, it doesn't matter in the least who I am.  I look a hundred
+different ways to a hundred different people.  Now let me see--I think
+you wanted some--clothes."
+
+A long, rapturous sigh was the only answer.  It lasted while the queen
+got down on her knees--just like an every-day, ordinary person--and
+pulled from under the throne a great carved chest.  She threw open the
+lid wide; and there, heaped to the top and spilling over, were dresses
+and mantles and coats and trousers and caps.  They were all lengths,
+sizes, and fashions--just what you most wanted after you had been in
+bed for years and never worn anything but a hospital shirt; and
+everything was made of cloth o' dreams and embroidered with pearls from
+the River of Make-Believe.
+
+"You can choose whatever you like, dearies," said the queen.  And
+that--according to Susan--was the best of all.
+
+Next came the dancing; the Apostles remembered about that
+co-operatively.  They had donned pants of pink and yellow,
+respectively, with shirts of royal purple and striked stockings, when
+the pipers began to play.  James said it sounded like soldiers
+marching; John was certain that it was more like a circus; but I am
+inclined to believe that they played "The Music of Glad Memories" and
+"What-is-Sure-to-Come-True," for those are the two popular airs in
+Tir-na-n'Og.
+
+Away and away must have danced pairs of little feet that had never
+danced before, and pairs of old feet that had long ago forgotten how;
+and millions of faery feet, for no one can dance half as joyously as
+when faeries dance with them.  And I have heard it said that the pipers
+there can play sadness into gladness, and tears into laughter, and old
+age young again; and that those who have ever danced to the music of
+faery pipes never really grow heavy-hearted again.
+
+Needless to say, the Apostles danced together, and Peter danced with
+Toby; and it must have been the maddest, merriest dance, for they never
+told about it afterward without bursting into peal after peal of
+laughter.  Truth to tell, the Apostles' patch of fancy ended right
+there--all raveling out into smiles and squirms of delight.
+
+Another memory of Sandy's adjoins that of the Apostles'; and he told it
+with great precision and regard for the truth.
+
+Ever since crossing the River of Make-Believe Sandy had been able to
+think of nothing but the story Bridget had told--the very last thing in
+Ward C--and ever since he had left the leprechaun's bush behind he had
+been wondering and scheming how he could get rid of his hump.  He was
+the only person in Tir-na-n'Og that night who did not dance.
+Unnoticed, he climbed into a corner of the throne--among the sleeping
+baby faeries--and there he thought hard.  As he listened to the pipers'
+music he shook his head mournfully.
+
+"A canna make music mair bonny nor that--a canna," he said; and he set
+about searching through the scraps of his memory for what music he did
+know.  There were the hymns they sang every Sunday at Saint Margaret's;
+but he somewhat doubted their appropriateness here.  Then there were
+the songs his mother had sung to him home in Aberdeen.  Long ago the
+words had been forgotten; but often and often he had hummed the music
+of them over to himself when he was going to sleep--it was good music
+for that.  One of the airs popped into his mind that very minute; it
+was a Jacobite song about "Charlie," and he started to hum it softly.
+Close on the humming came an idea--a braw one; it made him sit up in
+the corner of the throne and clap his hands, while his toes wriggled
+exultantly inside his faery shoes.
+
+"A can do't--a can!"  He shouted it so loud that the baby faeries woke
+up and asked what he was going to do, and gathered about him to listen
+the better.
+
+The pipers played until there were no more memories left and everything
+had come true; and the queen came back to her throne to find Sandy
+waiting, eager-eyed, for her.
+
+"A have a bonny song made for ye.  Wull ye tak it frae me noo?"
+
+"Take what?"
+
+"The hump.  Ye tuk it frae the ither loonie gien he made ye some guid
+music; an' a ha' fetched ye mair--here."  And he tapped his head to
+signify that it was not written down.
+
+"Is the song ready, now?"
+
+Sandy nodded.
+
+"Then turn about and sing it loud enough for all to hear; they must be
+the judges if the song is worth the price of a hump."  And the queen
+smiled very tenderly.
+
+Sandy did as he was bid; he clasped his hands tightly in front of him.
+"'Tis no for the faeries," he explained.  "Ye see--they be hardly
+needin' ony music, wi' muckle o' their ain.  'Tis for the children--the
+children i' horspitals--a bonny song for them to sleepit on."  He
+marked the rhythm a moment with his foot, and hummed it through once to
+be sure he had it.  Then he broke out clearly into the old Jacobite
+air--with words of his own making:
+
+  "Ye weave a bonny primrose ring;
+    Ye hear the River callin';
+  Ye ken the Land whaur faeries sing--
+    Whaur starlicht beams are fallin'.
+  'Tis there the pipers play things true;
+    'Tis there ye'll gae--my dearie--
+  The bonny Land 'at waits for you,
+    Whaur ye'll be nae mair weary.
+
+  "A wee man by a blackthorn-tree
+    Maun stitchit shoes for dancin',
+  An' there's a pair for ye an' me--
+    To set our feet a-prancin'.
+  'Tis muckle gladness 'at ye'll find
+    In Tir-na-n'Og, my dearie;
+  The bonny Land 'at's aye sae kind,
+    Whaur ye'll be nae mair weary.
+
+  "Ye'll ken the birdeen's blithie song,
+    Ye'll hark till flo'ers lauchen;
+  An' see the faeries trippit long
+    By brook an' brae an' bracken.
+  Sae doon your heid--an' shut your een;
+    Gien ye'd be away, my dearie--
+  An' the bonny sauncy faery queen
+    Wull keep ye--nae mair weary."
+
+You may think it uncommonly strange that Sandy could make a song like
+this, by himself; but, you see, he was not entirely alone--there were
+the baby faeries.  They helped a lot; as fast as ever he thought out
+the words they rhymed them for him--this being a part of the A B C of
+faery education.
+
+When the song was finished Sandy turned to the queen again.
+"Aighe--wull it do?"
+
+"If the faeries like it, and think it good enough to send down to the
+children, they will have it all learned by heart and will sing it back
+to you in a minute.  Listen!  Can you hear anything?"
+
+For a moment only the rustle of the trees could be heard.  Sandy
+strained his ears until he caught a low, sobbing sound coming through
+the hazel-leaves.
+
+"'Tis but the wind--greetin'," he said, wistfully.
+
+"Listen again!"
+
+The sound grew, breaking into a cadence and a counter-cadence, and
+thence into a harmony.  "'Tis verra ilk the grand pipe-organ i' the
+kirk, hame in Aberdeen."
+
+"Listen again!"
+
+Mellow and sweet came the notes of the Jacobite air--a bar of it; and
+then the faeries began to sing, sending the song back to Sandy like a
+belated echo:
+
+  "Ye weave a bonny primrose ring;
+    Ye hear the River callin';
+  Ye ken the Land whaur faeries sing--
+    Whaur starlicht beams are fallin'."
+
+"For the love o' Mike!" laughed Sandy.  "A'm unco glad--a am."  He
+dropped to his knees beside the queen and nestled his cheek in the hand
+that was resting in her lap.  "'Tis aricht noo."  And he sighed
+contentedly.
+
+And it was.  The queen leaned over and lifted off the hump as easily as
+you might take the cover from a box.  Sandy stretched himself and
+yawned--after the fashion of any one who has been sleeping a long time
+in a cramped position; and without being in the least conscious of it,
+he sidled up to the arm of the throne and rubbed his back up and
+down--to test the perfect straightness of it.
+
+"'Tis gone--guid!  Wull it nae mair coom back?"  And he eyed the queen
+gravely.
+
+"Never to be burdensome, little lad.  Others may think they see it
+there, but for you the back will be straight and strong."
+
+Rosita came back--empty-handed; she was so busy holding tight to
+Bridget's hand and getting ready to be afraid that she forgot
+everything else.  As for Michael, he gave his patch into Bridget's
+keeping; which brings us to what Bridget remembered.
+
+From the moment that the penny had been given over to her she had been
+weighed down with a mighty responsibility.  The financier of any large
+syndicate is bound to feel harassed at times over the outcome of his
+investments; and Bridget felt personally accountable for the
+forthcoming happiness due the eight other stockholders in her company.
+She was also mindful of what had happened in the past to other persons
+who had speculated heedlessly or unwisely with faery gifts.  There was
+the case of the fisherman and his wife, and the aged couple and their
+sausage, and the old soldier; on the other hand, there was the man from
+Letterkenny who had hoarded his gold and had it turn to dry leaves as a
+punishment.  She must neither keep nor spend foolishly.
+
+"Sure I'll think all round a thing twict afore I have my mind made to
+anythin'; then I'll keep it made for a good bit afore I give over the
+penny."
+
+She repeated this advice while she considered all possible investments,
+but she found nothing to her liking.  The children made frequent
+suggestions, such as bagpipes and clothes-chests, and contrivances for
+feast-spreading and transportation; and Susan was strongly in favor of
+a baby faery to take back to Miss Peggie.  But to all of these Bridget
+shook an emphatic negative.
+
+"Sure ye'd be tired o' the lot afore ye'd gone half-way back.  Like as
+not we'll never have another penny to spend as long as we live, an' I'm
+goin' to see that ye'll all get somethin' that will last."
+
+She was beginning to fear that theirs would be the fate of the man from
+Letterkenny, when she chanced upon Peter and Toby performing for the
+benefit of the pipers.
+
+"Them trusters will never be lettin' Pether take that dog back to the
+horspital," she thought, mindful of the sign in Saint Margaret's yard
+that dogs were not allowed.  "He'd have to be changin' him back into a
+make-believe dog to get him in at all; an' Pether'd never be satisfied
+wi' him that way, now--afther havin' him real."
+
+Her trouble took her to the queen.  "Is there any way of buyin' a dog
+into a horspital?" she asked, solemnly.
+
+"I think it would be easier to buy a home to put him in."
+
+"Could ye--could ye get one for the price of a penny?"  Bridget
+considered her own question, and coupled it with something she
+remembered Sandy had been wishing for back in Ward C.  "Wait a minute;
+I'll ask ye another.  Could ye be buyin' a home for childher an' dogs
+for the price of a penny?"
+
+The queen nodded.
+
+"Would it be big enough for nine childher--an' one dog; an' would it be
+afther havin' all improvements like Miss Peggie an' the House Surgeon?"
+
+Again the queen nodded.
+
+Bridget lowered her voice.  "An' could we put up a sign furninst, 'No
+Trusters Allowed'?"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"Then," said Bridget, with decision, "I've thought all round it twict
+an' my mind's been made to stay; we'll buy a home."
+
+She made a hollow of her two hands and called, "Whist--whist there, all
+o' yez!  Pether an' Pancho--Michael--Susan--do ye hear!"  And when she
+had them rounded up, she counted them twice to make sure they were all
+present.  "Now ye listen."  Bridget raised a commanding finger to the
+circle about her while she exhibited the golden penny.  "Is there any
+one objectin' to payin' this down for a home?"
+
+"What kind of a home?" asked Susan, shrewdly.
+
+"Sure the kind ye live in--same as other folks have that don't live in
+horspitals or asylums."
+
+"Hurrah!" chorused everybody, and Bridget sighed with relief.
+
+"Faith, spendin' money's terrible easy."
+
+She put the penny in the queen's out-stretched hand.  "Do I get a piece
+o' paper sayin' I paid the money on it?" she demanded, remembering her
+responsibility.
+
+This time the queen shook her head.  "No; I give you only my promise;
+but a promise made across a primrose ring is never broken."
+
+"And Toby?" Peter asked it anxiously.
+
+"You must leave him behind.  You see, if you took him back over the
+River of Make-Believe he would have to turn back into a make-believe
+dog again; but--I promise he shall be waiting in the home for you."
+
+The queen led them down the hill to the shore again; and there they
+found the ferry-man ready, waiting.  It is customary, I believe, for
+every one to be ferried home.  The river, that way, is treble as wide,
+and the sandman is always wandering up and down the brink, scattering
+his sand so that one is apt to get too drowsy to swim the whole
+distance.  The children piled into the boat--all but Michael; he stood
+clinging fast to the queen's gray dress.
+
+"Don't you want to go back?" she asked, gently.
+
+"Nyet; the heart by me no longer to bump--here," and Michael pointed to
+the pit of his stomach.
+
+"Aw, come on," called Peter.
+
+But Michael only shook his head and clung closer to the gray dress.
+
+"All right, ferryman; he may stay," said the queen.
+
+"Good-by!" shouted the children.  "Don't forget us, Michael."
+
+"Nyet; goo'-by," Michael shouted back; and then he laughed.  "You tell
+Mi' Peggie--I say--Go' blees you!"
+
+And this was Michael's patch.
+
+The ferryman stood in the stem and swung his great oar.  Slowly the
+boat moved, scrunching over the white pebbles, and slipped into the
+water.  The children saw Michael and the queen waving their hands until
+they had dwindled to shadow-specks in the distance; they watched the
+wake of starshine lengthen out behind them; they listened to the
+ripples lapping at the keel.  To and fro, to and fro, swayed the
+ferryman to the swing of his oar.  "Sleep--sleep--sleep," sang the
+river, running with them.  Bridget stretched her arms about as many
+children as she could compass and held them close while eight pairs of
+eyes slowly--slowly--shut.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN WHICH A PART OF THE BOARD HAS DISTURBING DREAMS
+
+It is a far cry from a primrose ring to a disbanded board meeting; but
+Fancy bridged it in a twinkling and without an effort.  She blew the
+trustees off the door-step of Saint Margaret's, homeward, with an
+insistent buzzing of "ifs" and "buts" in their ears, and the faint
+woodsy odor of primroses under their noses.
+
+To each member of the board entering his own home, unsupported by the
+presence of his fellow-members and the scientific zeal of the Senior
+Surgeon, the business of the afternoon began to change its aspect.  For
+some unaccountable reason--unless we take Fancy into the
+reckoning--this sudden abandoning of Ward C did not seem the simple
+matter of an hour previous; while in perspective even Margaret
+MacLean's outspokenness became less heinous and more human.
+
+As they settled themselves for the evening, each quietly and alone
+after his or her particular fashion of comfort, the "ifs" and "buts"
+were still buzzing riotously; while the primroses, although forgotten,
+clung persistently to the frills or coat lapels where the Youngest and
+Prettiest Trustee had put them.  There it was that Fancy slipped
+unnoticed over the threshold of library, den, and boudoir in turn; and
+with a glint of mischief in her eyes she set the stage in each place to
+her own liking, while she summoned whatever players she chose to do her
+bidding.
+
+Now the trustees were very different from the children in the matter of
+telling what they remembered of that May Eve.  Of course they were
+hampered with all the self-consciousness and skepticism of grown-ups,
+which would make them quite unwilling to own up to anything strange or
+out of the conventional path, not in a hundred years.  Therefore I am
+forced to leave their part of the telling to Fancy, and you may believe
+or discredit as much or as little as you choose; only I am hoping that
+by this time you have acquired at least a sprinkling of fern-seed in
+your eyes.  You may have forgotten that fern-seed is the most subtle of
+eye-openers known to Fancy; and that it enables you to see the things
+that have existed only in your imagination.  It is very scarce
+nowadays, and hard to find, for the bird-fanciers no longer keep
+it--and the nursery-gardeners have forgotten how to grow it.  In the
+light of what happened afterward, I think you will agree that Fancy has
+not been far wrong concerning the trustees; she has a way of putting
+things a little differently, that is all.
+
+To be sure, you may argue that it was all chance, conscience, or even
+indigestion; because the trustees dined late they must have dined
+heavily.  But if you do, you know very well that Fancy will answer:
+"Poof!  Nothing of the kind.  It was a simple matter of primrose magic
+and--faeries; nothing else."  And she ought to know, for she was there.
+
+The President began it.
+
+He sat in his den, yawning over the annual report of the United
+Charities; he had already yawned a score of times, and the type had
+commenced running together in a zigzagging line that baffled
+deciphering.  The President inserted a finger in the report to mark his
+place, making a mental note to consult his oculist the following day;
+after which he leaned back and closed his eyes for the space of a
+moment--to clear his vision.
+
+When he opened his eyes again his vision had cleared to such an extent
+that he was quite positive he was seeing things that were not in the
+room.  Little shadowy figures haunted the dark places: corners, and
+curtained recesses, and the unlighted hall beyond.  They peered at him
+shyly, with such witching, happy faces and eyes that laughed coaxingly.
+The President found himself peering back at them and scrutinizing the
+faces closely.  Oddly enough he could recognize many, not by name, of
+course, but he could place them in the many institutions over which he
+presided.  It was very evident that they were expecting something of
+him; they were looking at him that way.  For once in his life he was at
+loss for the correct thing to say.  He tried closing his eyes two or
+three times to see if he could not blink them into vanishing; but when
+he looked again there they were, more eager-eyed than before.
+
+"Well," he found himself saying at last--"well, what is it?"
+
+That was all; but it brought the children like a Hamlin troop to the
+piper's cry--flocking about him unafraid.  Never in all his charitable
+life had he ever had children gather about him and look up at him this
+way.  Little groping hands pulled at his cuffs or steadied themselves
+on his knee; more venturesome ones slipped into his or hunted their way
+into his coat pockets.  They were such warm, friendly, trusting little
+hands--and the faces; the President of Saint Margaret's Free Hospital
+for Children caught himself wondering why in all his charitable
+experience he had never had a child overstep a respectful distance
+before, or look at him save with a strange, alien expression.
+
+He sat very still for fear of frightening them off; he liked the warmth
+and friendliness of their little bodies pressed close to him; there was
+something pleasantly hypnotic in the feeling of small hands tugging at
+him.  Suddenly he became conscious of a change in the children's faces;
+the gladness was fading out and in its place was creeping a perplexed,
+questioning sorrow.
+
+"Don't."  And the President patted assuringly as many little backs as
+he could reach.  "What--what was it you expected?"
+
+He was answered by a quivering of lips and more insistent tugs at his
+pockets.  It flashed upon him--out of some dim memory--that children
+liked surprises discovered unexpectedly in some one's pockets.  Was
+this why they had searched him out?  He found himself frantically
+wishing that he had something stowed away somewhere for them.  His
+hands followed theirs into all the numerous pockets he possessed;
+trousers, coat, and vest were searched twice over; they were even
+turned inside out in the last hope of disclosing just one surprise.
+
+"I should think," said the President, addressing himself, "that a man
+might keep something pleasant in empty pockets.  What are pockets for,
+anyway?"
+
+The children shook their heads sorrowfully.
+
+"Wouldn't to-morrow do?" he suggested, hopefully; but there was no
+response from the children, and the weight that had been settling down
+upon him, in the region of his chest, noticeably increased.  He tried
+to shake it off, it was so depressing--like the accruing misfortune of
+some pending event.
+
+"Don't shake," said a voice behind him; "that isn't your misfortune.
+You will only shake it off on the children, and it's time enough for
+them to bear it when they wake up in the morning and find out--"
+
+"Find out what?"  The President asked it fearfully.
+
+"Find out--find out--" droned the voice, monotonously.
+
+The President sat up very straight in his chair.  "The children--the
+children."  He remembered now--they were the children from the
+incurable ward at Saint Margaret's.
+
+He sank back with a feeling of great helplessness, and closed his eyes
+again.  And there he sat, immovable, his finger still marking his place
+in the report of the United Charities.
+
+The Oldest Trustee sat alone, knitting comforters for the Preventorium
+patients.  Like many another elderly person, her usual retiring hour
+was later than that of the younger members of her household,
+undoubtedly due to the frequent cat-naps snatched from the evening.
+
+The Oldest Trustee had a habit of knitting the day's events in with her
+yarn.  What she had done and said and heard were all thought over again
+to the rhythmic click of her needles.  And the results at the end of
+the evening were usually a finished comforter and a comfortable
+feeling.  This night, however, the knitting lagged and the thoughts
+were unaccountably dissatisfying; she could not even settle down to a
+cat-nap with the habitual serenity.
+
+"I don't know why I should feel disturbed," and the Oldest Trustee
+prodded her yarn ball with a disquieting needle, "but I certainly miss
+the usual gratification of a day well spent."
+
+She closed her eyes, hoping thereby to lose herself for the space of a
+moment, but instead--  She was startled to hear voices at her very
+elbow; a number of persons must have entered the room, but how they
+could have done so without her knowing it she could not understand.  Of
+course they thought her asleep; it was just as well to let them think
+so.  She really felt too tired to talk.
+
+"Mother's undoubtedly growing old.  Have you noticed how much she naps
+in the evening, now?"  It was the voice of her youngest daughter.
+
+"I heard her telling some one the other day she was five years younger
+than she is.  That's a sure sign," and her son laughed an amused little
+chuckle.
+
+"I can tell you a surer one."  This time it was her oldest
+daughter--her first-born.  "Haven't you noticed how all mother's little
+peculiarities are growing on her?  She is getting so much more
+dictatorial and preachy.  Of course, we know that mother means to be
+kind and helpful, but she has always been so--tactless--and blunt; and
+it's growing worse and worse."
+
+"I have often wondered how all her charity people take her; it must
+come tough on them, sometimes.  Gee!  Can't you see her raising those
+lorgnettes of hers and saying, 'My good boy, do you read your Bible?'
+or, 'My little girl, I hope you remember to be grateful for all you
+receive.'  Say, wouldn't you hate to have charity stuffed down your
+throat that way?" and the oldest and favorite grandson groaned out his
+feelings.
+
+"That isn't what I should mind the most."  It was the youngest daughter
+speaking again.  "I've been with mother when she has made remarks about
+the patients in the hospital, loud enough for them to hear, and I was
+so mortified I wanted to sink through the floor, And you simply can't
+shut mother up.  Of course she doesn't realize how it sounds; she
+doesn't believe they hear her, but I know they do.  I wonder how mother
+would like to have us stand around her--and we know her and love
+her--and have us say she was getting deaf, or her hair was coming out,
+or her memory was beginning to fail, or--"
+
+The Oldest Trustee smiled grimly.  "Oh, don't stop, my dear.  If there
+is any other failing you can think of--"  She opened her eyes with a
+start.  "Goodness gracious!" she exclaimed.  "My grandson is in college
+five hundred miles away, and my daughter is abroad.  Have I been
+dreaming?"
+
+The Meanest Trustee unlocked the drawer of his desk and took out a
+cigar.  He did not intend that his sons or his servants should smoke at
+his expense; furthermore, it was well not to spread temptation before
+others.  He took up the evening paper and examined the creases
+carefully.  He wished to make sure it had not been unfolded before;
+being the one to pay for the news in his house, he preferred to be the
+first one to read it.  The creases proved perfectly satisfactory; so he
+lighted his cigar, crossed his feet, and settled himself--content in
+his own comfort.  The smoke spun into spirals about his head; and after
+he had skimmed the cream of the day's events he read more leisurely,
+stopping to watch the spirals with a certain lazy enjoyment.  They
+seemed to grow increasingly larger.  They spun themselves about into
+all kinds of shapes, wavering and illusive, that defied the somewhat
+atrophied imagination of the Meanest Trustee.
+
+"Hallucinations," he barked to himself.  "I believe I understand now
+what is implied when people are said to have them."
+
+Suddenly the spirals commenced to lengthen downward instead of upward.
+To the amazement of the Meanest Trustee he discovered them shifting
+into human shapes: here was the form of a child, here a youth, here a
+lover and his lass, here a little old dame, and scores more; while into
+the corners of the room drifted others that turned into the drollest of
+droll pipers--with kilt and brata and cap.  It made him feel as if he
+had been dropped into the center of a giant kaleidoscope, with
+thousands of pieces of gray smoke turning, at the twist of a hand, into
+form and color, motion and music.  The pipers piped; the figures
+danced, whirling and whirling about him, and their laughter could be
+heard above the pipers' music.
+
+"Stop!" barked the Meanest Trustee at last; but they only danced the
+faster.  "Stop!"  And he shook his fist at the pipers, who played
+louder and merrier.  "Stop!"  And he pounded the arms of his chair with
+both hands.  "I hate music!  I hate children!  I hate noise and
+confusion!  Stop! I say."
+
+Still the pipers played and the figures danced on; and the Meanest
+Trustee was compelled to hear and see.  To him it seemed an
+interminable time.  He would have stopped his ears with his fingers and
+shut his eyes, only, strangely enough, he could not.  But at last it
+all came to an end--the figures floated laughing away, and the pipers
+came and stood about him, their caps in their hands out-stretched
+before him.
+
+He eyed them suspiciously.  "What's that for?"
+
+"It is time to pay the pipers," said one.
+
+"Let those who dance pay; that's according to the adage," and he smiled
+caustically at his own wit.
+
+"It's a false adage," said a second, "like many another that you follow
+in your world.  It is not the ones who dance that should pay, but the
+ones who keep others from dancing--the ones who help to rob the world
+of some of its joy.  And the ones who rob the most must pay the
+heaviest.  Come!"  And he shook his cap significantly.
+
+A sudden feeling of helplessness overpowered the Meanest Trustee.
+Muttering something about "pickpockets" and "hold-ups," he ferreted
+around in his pocket and brought out a single coin, which he dropped
+ungraciously into the insistent cap.
+
+"What's that?" asked the head piper, curiously.
+
+"It looks to me like money--good money--and I'm throwing it away on a
+parcel of rascals."
+
+"Come, come, my good man," and the piper tapped him gently on the
+shoulder, in the fashion of a professional philanthropist when he
+remonstrates with a professional vagrant; "don't you see you are not
+giving your soul any room to grow in?  A great deal of joy might have
+reached the world across your open palm.  Instead, you have crushed it
+in a hard, tight fist.  You must pay now for all the souls you've kept
+from dancing.  Come--fill all our caps."
+
+"Fill!"  There was something akin to actual terror in the voice of the
+Meanest Trustee.  He could feel himself growing pale; his tongue seemed
+to drop back in his throat, choking him.  "That would take a great deal
+of money," he managed to wheeze out at last; and then he braced
+himself, his hands clutched deep in his pockets.  "I will never pay;
+never, never, never!"
+
+"Oh yes, you will!" and the piper's smile was insultingly cheerful.
+"It was a great deal of joy, you know," he reminded him.  "Come,
+lads"--to the other pipers--"hold out your caps, there."
+
+The Meanest Trustee had the strange experience of feeling himself
+worked by a force outside of his own will; it was as if he had been a
+marionette with a master-hand pulling the wires.  Quite mechanically he
+found himself taking something out of his pocket and dropping it into
+the caps thrust under his very nose, and at the same time his pockets
+began to fill with money--his money.  In and out, in and out, his hands
+flew like wooden members, until there was not a coin left and the last
+piper turned away satisfied.  He closed his eyes, for he was feeling
+very weak; then he became conscious of the touch of a warm, friendly
+hand on his wrist and he heard the voice of the old family doctor--the
+one who had set his leg when he was a little shaver and had fallen off
+the banisters, sliding downstairs.
+
+"You will recover," it was saying.  "A good rest is all you need.
+Sometimes there is nothing so beneficial and speedy as the
+old-fashioned treatment of bleeding a patient."
+
+Some warm ashes dropped across the wrist of the Meanest Trustee and
+scattered on the floor; his cigar had gone out.
+
+The Executive Trustee dozed at his study table.  For months he had been
+working his brain overtime; he had still more to demand of it, and he
+was deliberately detaching it from immediate executive consciousness
+for a few minutes that he might set it to work again all the harder.
+
+The Executive Trustee knew that he was dozing; but for all that it was
+unbearable--this feeling of being bound by coil after coil of rope
+until he could not stir a finger.  A terrifying numbness began to creep
+over him--as if his body had died.  The thought came to him like a
+shock that he had an active, commanding intelligence, still alive, and
+nothing for it to command.  What did people do who had to live with
+dead, paralyzed bodies, dependent upon others to execute the dictates
+of their brains?  Did not their brains go in the end, too, and leave
+just a breathing husk behind?  The thought became a horror to him.
+
+And yet people did live, just so.  Yes, even children.
+Somewhere--somewhere--he knew of hundreds of them--or were there only a
+few?  He tried to remember, but he could not.  He did remember,
+however, that he had once heard them laughing; and he found himself
+wondering now at the strangeness of it.  He hoped there was some one
+who would always keep them laughing--they deserved that much out of
+life, anyway; and some one who could understand and could administer to
+them lovingly--yes, that was the word--lovingly!  As for himself, there
+was no one who could supply for him that strength and power for action
+that he had always worshiped; he must exist for the rest of his life
+simply as a thinking, ineffective intelligence.  The Executive Trustee
+forgot that he was dozing.  He wrestled with the ropes that bound him
+like a crazed man; he called for help again and again, until his lips
+could make no sound.  For the first time in his remembrance he tasted
+the bitterness of despair.  Then it was that the door opened
+noiselessly and Margaret MacLean entered, her finger to her lips.  Coil
+after coil she unwound until he was free once more and could feel the
+marvelous response of muscle and nerve impulse.  With a cry--half sob,
+half thankfulness--he flung his arms across the table and buried his
+face in them.
+
+The Executive Trustee slept heavily, after the fashion of a man
+exhausted from hard labor.
+
+In the house left by the Richest Trustee a little gray wisp of a woman
+sat huddled in a great carved chair close to the hearth, thinking and
+thinking and thinking.  The fire was blazing high, trying its best to
+burn away the heart-cold and loneliness that clung about everything
+like a Dover fog.  For years she had ceased to exist apart from her
+husband--her thoughts, her wishes, her interests were of his creating;
+she had drawn her very nourishment of life from his strong, dominant,
+genial personality.  It was parasitic--oh yes, but it had been
+something rarely beautiful to them both--her great need of him.  The
+need had grown all the greater because no children had come to fill her
+life; and the need of something to take care of had grown with him.
+Their love, and her dependence, had become the greatest factors in his
+life; in hers they were the only ones.  Therefore, it was hardly
+strange, now that he had died, that she should find it hard to take up
+an individual existence again; to be truthful, she had found it
+impossible--she had not even existed.
+
+The habit of individual, separate thinking had grown rusty, and as she
+sat before the hearth ideas came slowly.  The room was dim--lighted
+only by the firelight; and in that dimness her mind began to stir and
+stretch and yawn itself awake, like a creature that had been
+hibernating through a long, dark winter.  Suddenly the widow of the
+Richest Trustee broke out into a feeble little laugh--a convalescing
+laugh that acted as if it was just getting about for the first time.
+
+"I haven't the least idea what is the matter with me," she said,
+addressing the fire, "but I think--I think--I'm becoming alive again."
+
+The fire gave an appreciative chuckle--it even slapped one of the logs
+on the back; then it sputtered and blazed the harder, just as if it
+were ashamed of showing any emotion.
+
+"It is funny," agreed the little gray wisp of a woman, "but I actually
+feel as I used to when I was a little girl and Christmas Eve had come,
+or Hallowe'en, and--and--  What other night in the year was it that I
+used to feel creepy and expectant--as if something wonderful was going
+to happen?"
+
+The fire coughed twice, as if it would have liked to remind her that it
+was May Eve, but felt it might be an intrusion.
+
+"I believe," she continued, speculatively--"I believe I am going to
+begin to think things and do them again; and what's more, I believe I
+am going to like doing them."
+
+The fire chuckled again, and danced about for a minute in an absurd
+fashion; it was so absurd that one of the logs broke a sap-vessel.
+After that the fire settled down to its intended vocation, that of
+making dream-pictures out of red and gold flames, and black, charred
+embers.
+
+The widow of the Richest Trustee watched them happily for a long time,
+until they became very definite and actual pictures.  Then she got up,
+went to her desk, and wrote two letters.
+
+The first was addressed to "The Board of Trustees of Saint Margaret's
+Free Hospital for Children"; the second was addressed to "Miss Margaret
+MacLean."  They were both sealed and mailed that night.
+
+What befell the other trustees does not matter, either from the
+standpoint of Fancy or of what happened afterward; moreover, it was
+nearly midnight, and what occurs after that on May Eve does not count.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE LOVE-TALKER
+
+All through the evening Saint Margaret's had been frankly miserable.
+Nurses gathered in groups in the nurses' annex and talked about the
+closing of the incurable ward and the going of Margaret MacLean.  The
+passing of the incurables mattered little to them, one way or another,
+but they knew what it mattered to the nurse in charge, and they were
+just beginning to realize what she had meant to them all.  The
+Superintendent felt so much concerned that she dropped her official
+manner when she chanced upon Margaret MacLean on her way from supper.
+
+"Oh, my dear--my dear"--and the Superintendent's voice had almost
+broken--"what shall we do without you?  You have kept Saint Margaret's
+human--and wholesome for the rest of us."
+
+The House Surgeon had been miserable unto the third degree.  It had
+forced him into doing all those things he had left undone for months
+passed; and he bustled through the building--from pharmacy to
+laboratory and from operating-room to supply-closets--giving the
+impression of a very scientific man, while he was inwardly praying for
+a half-dozen minutes alone with Margaret MacLean.  He had passed her
+more than once in the corridors, but she had eluded him each time,
+brushing by him with a tightening of the lips and a little shake of the
+head, half pleading, half commanding.  At last, in grim despair, he
+gave up appearances and patrolled the second-floor hall until the night
+nurse fixed upon him such a greenly suspicious eye that he fled to his
+quarters--vowing unspeakable things.
+
+Even old Cassie, the scrub-woman, shared in the general misery--Cassie,
+who had brewed the egg-shell charm against Trustee Days.  She had
+stayed past her hours for a glimpse of "Miss Peggie," with the best
+intention in the world of cheering her up.  When the glimpse came,
+however, she stood mute--tears channeling the old wrinkled face--while
+the nurse patted her hands and made her laugh through the tears.  In
+fact, Margaret MacLean had been kept so busy doling out cheer and
+consolation to others that she had had no time to remember her own
+trouble--not until Saint Margaret's had gone to bed.
+
+She was on her way for a final visit to her ward--the visit she had
+told Bridget she would make to see if the promise had been kept--when a
+line from Hauptman's faery play flashed through her mind: "At dawn we
+are kings; at night we are only beggars."
+
+How true it was of her--this day.  How beggared she felt!  The fact
+that she was very nearly penniless troubled her very little; it was the
+homelessness--friendlessness--that frightened her.  She had never had
+but two friends: the one who had gone so long ago was past helping her
+now; the other--
+
+No; she had made up her mind some hours before that she should slip
+away in the morning without saying anything to the House Surgeon.  It
+would make it so much easier for him.  Otherwise--he might--because of
+his friendship--say or do something he would have to regret all his
+life.  She had been very much in earnest when she had told the Senior
+Surgeon on the stairs that such as she laid no claim to the every-day
+happiness that felt to the lot of others.  That was why she had kept
+persistently out of the House Surgeon's way all the evening.
+
+She pushed back the door of Ward C.  The night light in the hall
+outside was shaded; only a glimmer came through the windows from the
+street lamps below; consequently things could not be seen very clearly
+or distinguishably in the room.  Across the threshold her foot slid
+over something soft and slippery; stooping, her hand closed upon a
+flower, while she brushed another.  Puzzled, she felt her way over to
+the table in the center of the room, where she had put the green
+Devonshire bowl.  It was empty.
+
+"That's funny," she murmured, her mind attempting to ferret out an
+explanation.  She dropped to her knees and scanned the floor closely.
+There they were, the primroses, a curving trail of them stretching from
+the head of Pancho's bed to the foot of Michael's.  She choked back an
+exclamation just as a shadow cut off the light from the hall.  It was a
+man's shadow, and the voice of the House Surgeon came over the
+threshold in a whisper:
+
+"What are you doing--burying ghosts?"
+
+"Come and see, and let the light in after you."
+
+The House Surgeon came and stood behind her where she knelt.  She
+looked so little and childlike there that he wanted to pick her up and
+tell her--oh, such a host of things!  But he was a wise House Surgeon,
+and his experience on the stairs had not counted for nothing; moreover,
+he was a great believer in the psychological moment, so he peered over
+her shoulder and tried to make out what she was looking at.
+
+"Faded flowers," he volunteered at last, somewhat doubtfully.
+
+"A primrose ring," she contradicted.  "But who ever heard of one in a
+hospital?  Take care--"  For the surgeon's shoe was carelessly knocking
+some of the blossoms out of place.  "Don't you know that no one must
+disturb a primrose ring?  It's sacred to Fancy; and there is no telling
+what is happening inside there to-night."
+
+"What?"  The House Surgeon asked it as breathlessly as any little boy
+might have.  Science had goaded him hard along the road of established
+facts, thereby causing him to miss many pleasant things which he still
+looked back upon regretfully, and found himself eager for, at times.
+Of course, he had scoffed at them aloud and before Margaret MacLean,
+but inwardly he adored them.
+
+She did not answer; she was too busy wondering about something to hear
+the House Surgeon's question.  Her eyes looked very big and round in
+the darkness, and her face wore the little-girl scarey look as she
+reached up for his hand and clutched it tight, while her other hand
+pointed across the primrose ring to the row of beds.
+
+"See, they look empty, quite---quite empty."
+
+"Just nerves."  And he patted the hand in his reassuringly; he tried
+his best to pat it in the old, big-brother way.  "You've had an awfully
+trying day--most women would be in their rooms having hysteria or
+doldrums."
+
+Still she did not hear.  Her eyes were traveling from cot to crib and
+on to cot again, as they had once before that night.  "Every single bed
+looks empty," she repeated.  "The clothes tumbled as if the children
+had slipped quietly out from under them."  She shivered ever so
+slightly.  "Perhaps they have found out they are not wanted any longer
+and have run away."
+
+"Come, come," the House Surgeon spoke in a gruff whisper.  "I believe
+you're getting feverish."  And mechanically his ringers closed over her
+pulse.  Then he pulled her to her feet.  "Go over to those beds this
+minute and see for yourself that every child is there, safe and sound
+asleep."
+
+But she held back, laughing nervously.  "No, no; we mustn't spoil the
+magic of the ring."  Her voice trailed off into a dreamy, wistful
+monotone.  "Who knows--Cinderella's godmother came to her when it was
+only a matter of ragged clothes and a party; the need here was far
+greater.  Who knows?"  She caught her breath with a sudden in-drawn
+cry.  "Why, to-night is May Eve!"
+
+"Why, of course it is!" agreed the House Surgeon, as if he had known it
+from the beginning.
+
+"And who knows but the faeries may have come and stolen them all away?"
+
+Now the House Surgeon was old in understanding, although he was young
+in years; and he knew it was wiser sometimes to give in to the whims of
+a tired, overwrought brain.  He knew without being told--for Margaret
+MacLean would never have told--how tired and hopelessly heart-sick and
+mind-sick she was to-night.  What he did not know, however, was how
+pitifully lonely and starved her life had always been; and that this
+was the hour for the full conscious reckoning of it.
+
+She had often said, whimsically, "Those who are born with wooden
+instead of golden spoons in their mouths had better learn very young to
+keep them well scoured, or they'll find them getting so rough and
+splintered that they can't possibly eat with them."  She had followed
+her own advice bravely, and kept happy; but now even the wooden spoon
+had been taken from her.
+
+The House Surgeon lifted her up and put her gently into the rocker,
+while he sat down on the corner of the table, neighbor to the green
+Devonshire bowl.
+
+Perhaps Margaret MacLean was not to find bitterness, after all; perhaps
+it would be his glad good fortune to keep it from her.  It was
+surprising the way he felt his misery dwindling, and instantly he
+pulled up his courage--another hole.
+
+"I think you said 'faeries,'" he suggested, seriously.  "Why not
+faeries?"
+
+She nodded in equal seriousness.  "Why not?  They always come May Eve
+to the lonely of heart; and even a hospital might have faeries once in
+a generation.  Only--only why couldn't they have taken me with the
+children?  It wasn't exactly fair to leave me behind, was it?"
+
+Her lips managed to keep reasonably steady, but she was wishing all the
+time that the House Surgeon would go and leave her free to be foolishly
+childish and weak.  She wanted to drop down beside Bridget's bed and
+sob out her trouble.
+
+But the House Surgeon had a very permanent look as he went on soberly
+talking.
+
+"Well, you see, they took the children first because they were all
+ready.  Probably, very probably, they are sending for you
+later--special messenger.  It's still some minutes before midnight; and
+that's the time things like that happen.  Isn't it?"
+
+"Perhaps."  A little amused smile crept into the corners of her mouth
+while she rummaged about in some old memories for something she had
+almost forgotten.  "Perhaps"--she began again--"they will send the
+Love-Talker."
+
+"The what?"
+
+"The Love-Talker.  Old Cassie used to tell us about him, when I was an
+'incurable.'  He's a faery youth who comes on May Eve in the guise of
+some well-appearing young man and beguiles a maid back with him into
+faeryland.  He's a very ardent wooer--so Cassie said--and there's no
+maid living who can resist him."
+
+"Wish I'd had a course with him," muttered the House Surgeon under his
+breath.  Then he gripped the table hard with both hands while the
+spirit of mischief leaped, flagrant, into his eyes.  "Would you go with
+him--if he came?" he asked, intensely.
+
+"If he came--if he came--" she repeated, dreamily.  "How do I know what
+I would do?  It would all depend upon the way he wooed."
+
+Unexpectedly the House Surgeon jumped to his feet, making a
+considerable clatter.
+
+"Hush! you'll waken the children."
+
+"But they're not here," he reminded her.
+
+"Yes, I know; but you might waken them, just the same."
+
+Instead of answering, the House Surgeon stepped behind the rocker and
+lifted her out of it bodily; then his hands closed over hers and he
+lifted them to her eyes, thereby blind-folding them.  "Now," he
+commanded, "take two steps forward."
+
+She did it obediently; and then stood waiting for further orders.
+
+"You are now inside this magical primrose ring; and you said yourself,
+a moment ago, there was no telling what might happen inside.  Keep very
+still; don't move, don't speak.  Remember you mustn't uncover your
+eyes, or the spell will be broken.  Hark!  Can you hear something--some
+one coming nearer and nearer and nearer?"
+
+For the space of a dozen breaths nothing could be heard in Ward C; that
+is--unless one was tactless enough to mention the sound of two
+throbbing hearts.  One fluttered, frightened and hesitating; the other
+thumped, steady and determined.  Then out of the darkness came the
+striking of the hospital clock on the tower--twelve long, mournful
+tolls--and one of the House Surgeon's arms slipped gently about the
+shoulders of Margaret MacLean.
+
+"Dearest, the Love-Talker has turned so completely human that he has to
+say at the outset he's not half good enough for you, But he wants
+you--he wants you, just the same, to carry back with him to his
+faery-land.  It will be rather a funny little old faery-land, made up
+of work and poverty--and love; but, you see, the last is so big and
+strong it can shoulder the other two and never know it's carrying a
+thing.  If you'll only come, dearest, you can make it the finest, most
+magical faeryland a man ever set up home-making in."
+
+Another silence settled over Ward C.
+
+"Well--" said the House Surgeon, breaking it at last and sounding a
+trifle nervous.  "Well--"
+
+"I thought you said I wasn't to move or speak, or the spell would be
+broken?"
+
+"That's right, excellent nurse--followed doctor's orders exactly."  He
+was smiling radiantly now, only no one could see.  Slowly he drew her
+hands away from her eyes and kissed the lids.  "You can open them if
+you solemnly promise not to be disappointed when you see the
+Love-Talker has stepped into an ordinary house surgeon's uniform and
+looks like the--devil."  With a laugh the House Surgeon gathered her
+close in his arms.
+
+"The devil was only a rebelling angel," she murmured, contentedly.
+
+"But I'm not rebelling.  Bless those trustees!  If they hadn't put us
+both out of the hospital we might be jogging along for the next ten
+years on the wholesome, easily digested diet of friendship, and never
+dreamed of the feast we were missing--like this--and this--and--"
+
+Margaret MacLean buried her face in the uniform with a sob.
+
+"What is it, dearest?  Don't you like them?"
+
+"I--love--them.  Don't you understand?  I never belonged to anybody
+before in all my life, so no one ever wanted to--"
+
+The rest was unintelligible, but perfectly satisfactory to the House
+Surgeon.  He held her even closer while she sobbed out the tears that
+had been intended for the edge of Bridget's bed; and when they were
+spent he wiped away all traces with some antiseptic gauze that happened
+to be in his pocket.
+
+"I will never be foolish again and remember what lies behind to-night,"
+said Margaret MacLean, knowing full well that she would be, and that
+often, because of the joy that would lie in remembering and comparing.
+"Now tell me, did they make you go, too?"
+
+"The President told me, very courteously, that he felt sure I would be
+wishing to find another position elsewhere better suited to my rising
+abilities; and if an opportunity should come--next month, perhaps--they
+would not wish in any way to interfere with my leaving."
+
+"Ugh!  I--"
+
+"No, you don't, dearest.  You couldn't expect them to want us around
+after the things we magnanimously refrained from saying--but so
+perfectly implied."
+
+"All right, I'll love them instead, if you want me to, only--"  And she
+puckered her forehead into deep furrows of perplexity.  "I have kept it
+out of my mind all through the evening, but we might as well face it
+now as to-morrow morning.  What is going to happen to us?"
+
+The House Surgeon turned her about until she was again looking across
+the line of scattered blossoms--into the indistinguishable darkness
+beyond.  He laughed joyously, as a man can laugh when everything lies
+before him and there are no regrets left behind.  "Have you forgotten
+so soon?  We are to cross the primrose ring--right here; and follow the
+road--there--into faeryland after the children."
+
+"The beds really do look empty."
+
+"They certainly do."
+
+"And we'll find the children there?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And I'll not have to give them up?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"And we'll all be happy together--somewhere?"
+
+"Yes, somewhere!"
+
+She turned quickly and reached out her arms to him hungrily.  "I know
+now why a maid always follows the Love-Talker when he comes a-wooing."
+
+"Why, dearest?"
+
+"Because he makes her believe in him and the country where he is taking
+her, and that's all a woman asks."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARD
+
+Everybody woke with a start on the morning following the 30th of April;
+things began to happen even before the postman had made his first
+rounds.  The operators at the telephone switchboards were rushed at an
+unconscionably early hour, considering that their station compassed the
+Avenue.  The President was trying to get the trustees, Saint
+Margaret's, and the Senior Surgeon; the trustees were trying to get one
+another; while the Senior Surgeon was rapidly covering the distance
+between his home and the hospital--his mind busy with a multitude of
+things, none of which he had ever written with capitals.
+
+Saint Margaret's was astir before its usual hour; there was a tang of
+joyousness in the air, and everybody's heart and mind, strangely
+enough, seemed to be in festal attire, although nobody was outwardly
+conscious of it.  It was all the more inexplicable because Saint
+Margaret's had gone to bed miserable, and events naturally pointed
+toward depression: Margaret MacLean's coming departure, the abandoning
+of Ward C, the House Surgeon's resignation, and Michael's empty crib.
+
+Ward C had wakened with a laugh.  Margaret MacLean, who had been moving
+noiselessly about the room for some time, picking up the withered
+remains of the primrose ring, looked up with apprehension.  The tears
+she had shed over Michael's crib were quite dry, and she had a brave
+little speech on the end of her tongue ready for the children's
+awakening.  Eight pairs of sleepy eyes were rubbed open, and then
+unhesitatingly turned in the direction of the empty crib in the corner.
+
+"Michael has gone away." she said, softly, steadying her voice with
+great care.  "He has gone where he will be well--and his heart sound
+and strong."
+
+She was wholly unprepared for the children's response.  It was so
+unexpected, in fact, that for the moment she tottered perilously near
+the verge of hysterics.  The children actually grinned; while Bridget
+remarked, with a chuckle:
+
+"Ye are afther meanin' that he didn't come back--that's what!"  And
+then she added, as an afterthought, "He said to tell ye 'God bless ye,'
+Miss Peggie."
+
+Margaret MacLean did not know whether to be shocked or glad that the
+passing of a comrade had brought no sign of grief.  Instead of being
+either, she went on picking up the primroses and wondering.  As for the
+children, they lay back peacefully in their beds, their eyes laughing
+riotously.  And every once in a while they would look over at one
+another, giving the funniest little expressive nods, which seemed to
+say: "I know what you're thinking about, and you know what I'm thinking
+about, so what's the need of talking.  But when is it going to happen?"
+
+The House Surgeon brought up her mail; it was an excuse to see her
+again before his official visit.  "Are the children very much broken up
+over it?" he asked, anxiously, outside the door.
+
+For answer Margaret MacLean beckoned him and pointed to the eight
+occupied cots--unquestionably serene and happy.
+
+"Well, I'll be--" began the House Surgeon, retiring precipitously back
+to the door again; but the nurse put a silencing finger over his lips.
+
+"Hush, dear!  The children are probably clearer visioned than we are.
+I have the distinct feeling this morning of being very blind and
+stupid, while they seem--oh, so wise."
+
+The House Surgeon grunted expressively.  "Well, perhaps they won't take
+your going away so dreadfully to heart--now; or theirs, for that
+matter."
+
+"I hope not," and then she smiled wistfully.  "But I thought you told
+me last night we were all going together?  At any rate, I am not going
+to tell them anything.  If it must be it must be, and I shall slip off
+quietly, when the children are napping, and leave the trustees to tell."
+
+She looked her mail over casually; there were the usual number of
+advertisements, a letter from one of the nurses who had gone South, and
+another in an unfamiliar hand-writing.  She tore off the corner of the
+last, and, running her finger down the flap, she commented:
+
+"Looks like quality.  A letter outside the profession is a very rare
+thing for me."
+
+She read the letter through without a sound, and then she read it
+again, the House Surgeon watching, the old big-brother look gone for
+ever from his face, and in its place a worshipful proprietorship.  The
+effect of the letter was undeniably Aprilish; she looked up at the
+House Surgeon with the most radiant of smiles, while her eyes spilled
+recklessly over.
+
+"How did you know it?  How did you know it?" she repeated.
+
+He was trying his best to find out what it was all about when one of
+the nurses came hurrying down the corridor.
+
+"You are both wanted down in the board-room.  They have called a
+special meeting of the trustees for nine o'clock; everybody's here and
+acting decidedly peculiar, I think.  Why, as I passed the door I am
+sure I saw the President slapping the Senior Surgeon on the back.  I
+never heard of anything like this happening before."
+
+"Come," said Margaret MacLean to the House Surgeon.  "If we walk down
+very slowly we will have time enough to read the letter on the way."
+
+As the nurse had intimated, it was an altogether unprecedented meeting.
+Formality had been gently tossed out of the window; after which the
+President sat, not behind his desk, but upon it--an open letter in his
+hand.  His whole attitude suggested a wish to banish, as far as it lay
+within his power, the atmosphere of the previous afternoon.
+
+"Here is a letter to be considered first," he said, a bit gravely.  "It
+makes rather a good prologue to our reconsideration of the incurable
+ward," and the ghost of a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.
+"This is from the widow of the Richest Trustee."  He read, slowly:
+
+
+"MESDAMES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD,--I thank you for your courtesy in
+asking me to fill my husband's place as one of the trustees of Saint
+Margaret's.  Until this afternoon I had every intention of so doing;
+but I cannot think now that my husband would wish me to continue his
+support of an institution whose directors have so far forgotten the
+name under which they dispense their charity as to put science and
+pride first.  As for myself--I find I am strongly interested in
+incurables--your incurables.
+      Yours very truly"
+
+
+The President laid the letter behind him on the desk, while the entire
+board gasped in amazement.
+
+"Well, I'll be hanged!" muttered the Disagreeable Trustee.
+
+"But just think of _her_--writing it!" burst forth the Oldest Trustee.
+
+The Meanest Trustee barked out an exclamation, but nothing followed it;
+undoubtedly that was due to the President's interrupting:
+
+"I think if we had received this yesterday we should have been
+very--exceedingly--indignant; we should have censured the writer
+severely.  As it is--hmm--"  The President stopped short; it was as if
+his mind had refused to tabulate his feelings.
+
+"As it is"--the Executive Trustee took up the dropped thread and went
+on--"we have decided to reconsider the removal of the incurable ward
+without any--preaching--or priming of conscience."
+
+"I am so glad we really had changed our minds first.  I should so hate
+to have that insignificant little woman think that we were influenced
+by anything she might write.  Wouldn't you?"  And the Youngest and
+Prettiest Trustee dimpled ravishingly at the Senior Surgeon.
+
+"Wouldn't you two like to go into the consulting-room and talk it over?
+We could settle the business in hand, this time, without your
+assistance, I think."  The voice of the Disagreeable Trustee dripped
+sarcasm.
+
+"I should suggest," said the President, returning to the business of
+the meeting, "that the ward might be continued for the present, until
+we investigate the home condition of the patients and understand
+perhaps a little more thoroughly just what they need, and where they
+can be made most--comfortable."
+
+"And retain Margaret MacLean in charge?"  The Meanest Trustee gave it
+the form of a question, but his manner implied the statement of a
+disagreeable fact.
+
+"Why not?  Is there any one more competent to take charge?"  The
+Executive Trustee interrogated each individual member of the board with
+a quizzical eye.
+
+"But the new surgical ward--and science?"  The Youngest and Prettiest
+threw it, Jason-fashion, and waited expectantly for a clash of steel.
+
+Instead the Senior Surgeon stepped forward, rather pink and
+embarrassed.  "I should like to withdraw my request for a new surgical
+ward.  It can wait--for the present, at least."
+
+And then it was that Margaret MacLean and the House Surgeon entered the
+board-room.
+
+The President nodded to them pleasantly, and motioned to the chairs
+near him.  "We are having what you professional people call a reaction.
+I hardly know what started it; but--hmmm--"  For the second time that
+morning he came to a dead stop.
+
+Everybody took great pains to avoid looking at everybody else; while
+each face wore a painful expression of sham innocence.  It was as if so
+many naughty children had been suddenly caught on the wrong side of the
+fence, the stolen fruit in their pockets.  It was gone in less time
+than it takes for the telling; but it would have left the careful
+observer, had he been there, with the firm conviction that, for the
+first time in their conservative lives, the trustees of Saint
+Margaret's had come perilously near to giving themselves away.
+
+In a twinkling the board sat at ease once more, and the President's
+habitual composure returned.  "Will some one motion that we adopt the
+two measures we have suggested?  This is not parliamentary, but we are
+all in a hurry."
+
+"I motion that we keep the incurables for the present, and that Miss
+MacLean be requested to continue in charge."  There was a note of
+relieved repression in the voice of the Executive Trustee as he made
+the motion; and he stretched his shoulders unconsciously.
+
+"But you mustn't make any such motion."  Margaret MacLean rose,
+reaching forth protesting hands.  "You would spoil the very best thing
+that has happened for years and years.  Just wait--wait until you have
+heard."
+
+As she unfolded her letter the President's alert eye promptly compared
+it with the one behind him on the desk.  "So--you have likewise heard
+from the widow of the Richest Trustee?"
+
+She looked at him, puzzled.  "Oh, you know!  She has written you?"
+
+"Not what she has written you, I judge.  One could hardly term our
+communication 'the best thing that has happened in years.'"  And again
+a smile twitched at the corners of the President's mouth.
+
+"Then listen to this."  Margaret MacLean read the letter eagerly:
+
+
+"DEAE MARGARET MACLEAN,--There is a home standing on a hilltop--an
+hour's ride from the city.  It belongs to a lonely old woman who finds
+that it is too large and too lonely for her to live in, and too full of
+haunting memories to be left empty.  Therefore she wants to fill it
+with incurable children, and she would like to begin with the discarded
+ward of Saint Margaret's."
+
+
+"That's a miserable way to speak of a lot of children," muttered the
+Disagreeable Trustee; but no one paid any attention, and Margaret
+MacLean went on:
+
+
+"There is room now for about twenty beds; and annexes can easily be
+added as fast as the need grows.  This lonely old woman would consider
+it a great kindness if you will take charge; she would also like to
+have you persuade the House Surgeon that it is high time for him to
+become Senior Surgeon, and the new home is the place for him to begin.
+Together we should be able to equip it without delay; so that the
+children could be moved direct from Saint Margaret's.  It is the whim
+of this old woman to call it a 'Home for Curables'--which, of course,
+is only a whim.  Will you come to see me as soon as you can and let us
+talk it over?"
+
+
+Margaret MacLean folded the letter slowly and put it back in its
+envelope.  "You see," she said, the little-girl look spreading over her
+face--"you see, you mustn't take us back again.  I could not possibly
+refuse, even if I wanted to; it is just what the children have longed
+for--and wished for--and--"
+
+"We are not going to give up the ward; she would have to start her home
+with other children."  The Dominant Trustee announced it flatly.
+
+Strangely enough, the faces of his fellow-directors corroborated his
+assertion.  Often the value of a collection drops so persistently in
+the estimate of its possessor that he begins to contemplate exchanging
+it for something more up to date or interesting.  But let a rival
+collector march forth with igniting enthusiasm and proclaim a desire
+for the scorned objects, and that very moment does the possessor
+tighten his grip on them and add a decimal or two to their value.  So
+was it with the trustees of Saint Margaret's.  For the first time in
+their lives they desired the incurable ward and wished to retain it.
+
+"Not only do we intend to keep the children, but there are many
+improvements I shall suggest to the board when there is more time.  I
+should like to insist on a more careful supervision of--curious
+visitors."  And the Oldest Trustee raised her lorgnette and compassed
+the gathering with a look that challenged dispute.
+
+Margaret MacLean's face became unaccountably old and tired.  The vision
+that had seemed so close, so tangible, so ready to be made actual, had
+suddenly retreated beyond her reach, and she was left as empty of heart
+and hand as she had been before.  For a moment her whole figure seemed
+to crumple; and then she shook herself together into a resisting,
+fighting force again.
+
+"You can't keep the children, after this.  Think, think what it means
+to them--a home in the country, on a hilltop, trees and birds and
+flowers all about.  Many of them could wheel themselves out of doors,
+and the others could have hammocks and cots under the trees.  Forget
+for this once that you are trustees, and think what it means to the
+children."
+
+"But can't you understand?" urged the President, "we feel a special
+interest in these children.  They are beginning to belong to us--as you
+do, yourself, for that matter."
+
+The little-girl look came rushing into Margaret MacLean's face,
+flooding it with wistfulness.  "It's a little hard to believe--this
+belonging to anybody.  Yesterday I seemed to be the only person who
+wanted me at all, and I wasn't dreadfully keen about it myself."  Then
+she clapped her hands with the suddenness of an idea.  "After all, it's
+the children who are really most concerned.  Why shouldn't we ask them?
+Of course I know it is very much out of the accustomed order of things,
+but why not try it?  Couldn't we?"
+
+Anxiously she scanned the faces about her.  There was surprise,
+amusement, but no dissent.  The Disagreeable Trustee smiled secretly
+behind his hand; it appealed to his latent sense of humor.
+
+"It would be rather a Balaam and his ass affair, but, as Miss MacLean
+suggests, why not try it?" he asked.
+
+Margaret MacLean did not wait an instant longer.  She turned to the
+House Surgeon.  "Bring Bridget down, quickly."
+
+As he disappeared obediently through the door she faced the trustees,
+as she had faced them once before, on the day previous.  "Bridget will
+know better than any one else what will make the children happiest.
+Now wouldn't it be fun"--and she smiled adorably--"if you should all
+play you were faery godparents, for once in your lifetime, and give
+Bridget her choice, whatever it may be?"
+
+This time the entire board smiled back at her; somehow, in some strange
+way, it had caught a breath of Fancy.  And then--the House Surgeon
+re-entered with Bridget in his arms, looking very scared until she
+spied "Miss Peggie."
+
+The President did the nicest thing, proving himself the good man he
+really was.  He crossed hands with the House Surgeon, thereby making a
+swinging chair for Bridget, and together they held her while Margaret
+MacLean explained:
+
+"It's this way, dear.  Some one has offered you--and all the
+children--a home in the country--a home of your very own.  But the
+trustees of Saint Margaret's hardly want to give you up; they think
+they can take as good care of you--and make you just as happy here."
+
+"But--sure--they'll have to be givin' us up.  Weren't we afther givin'
+a penny to the wee one yondther for the home?" and Bridget pointed a
+commanding finger toward the door.
+
+Everybody looked.  There on the threshold stood the widow of the
+Richest Trustee.
+
+"What do you mean, dear?  How could you have given her a penny?"
+Margaret MacLean asked it in bewilderment.
+
+"'Twas all the doin's o' the primrose ring." And then Bridget shouted
+gaily across to the gray wisp of a woman.  "Ye tell them.  Weren't ye
+afther givin' us the promise of a home?"
+
+"And haven't I come to keep the promise?" she answered, as gaily.  But
+in an instant she sobered as her eyes fell on the open letter on the
+President's desk.  "I am so sorry I wrote it--that is why I have come;
+not that I don't think you deserved it, for you do," and the widow of
+the Richest Trustee looked at them unwaveringly.
+
+If she was conscious of the surprised faces about, she gave no sign for
+others to reckon by.  Instead, she walked the length of the board-room
+to the President's desk and went on speaking hurriedly, as if she
+feared to be interrupted before she had said all she had come to say.
+"I wish I had written in another way, a more helpful way.  Why not add
+your second surgical ward to Saint Margaret's and do all the good work
+you can, as you had planned?  Only let me have these children to start
+a home which shall be a future harbor for all the cases you cannot mend
+with your science and which you ought not to set adrift.  You can send
+me all the convalescing children, too, who need country air and
+building up.  In return for this, and because you deserve to be
+punished--just a little--for yesterday--I shall try my best to take
+with me Margaret MacLean and your House Surgeon."
+
+She laid a hand on both, while she added, softly: "Suppose we three go
+home together and talk things over.  Shall we?"
+
+
+So the "Home for Curables" has come true.  It crests a hilltop, and is
+well worth the penny that Bridget gave for it.  As the children
+specified, there are no "trusters"; and it has all the modern
+improvements, including Margaret MacLean, who is still "Miss Peggie,"
+although she is married to their new Senior Surgeon.
+
+There is one very particular thing about the Home which ought to be
+mentioned.  When the children arrived Toby was on the steps, barking a
+welcome.  No one was surprised; in fact, everybody acted as though he
+belonged there.  Perhaps the surprising thing would have been not
+having the promise kept.  Toby is allowed right of way, everywhere; and
+rumor has it that he often sneaks in at night and sleeps on Peter's
+bed.  But, of course, that is just rumor.
+
+The children are supremely happy; which means that no one is allowed to
+cross the threshold who cannot give the password of a friend.  And you
+might like to know that many of the trustees of Saint Margaret's come
+as often as anybody, and are always welcomed with a shout.  The
+President, in particular, has developed the habit of secreting things
+in his pockets until he comes looking very bulgy.
+
+Margaret MacLean always puts the children to sleep with Sandy's song;
+she said it was written by a famous poet who loved children, and the
+children have never told her the truth about it.  And if it happens, as
+it does once in a great while, that some one is missing in the morning,
+there is no sorrowing for him, or heavy-heartedness.  They miss him, of
+course; but they picture him running, sturdy-limbed, up the slope to
+the leprechaun's tree, with Michael waiting for him not far off.
+
+To the children Tir-na-n'Og is the waiting-place for all child-souls
+until Saint Anthony is ready to gather them up and carry them away with
+him to the "Blessed Mother"; and Margaret MacLean, having nothing
+better to tell them, keeps silent.  But she has thought of the nicest
+custom: A new picture is hung in the Home after a child has gone.  It
+bears his name; and it is always something that he liked--birds or
+flowers or ships or some one from a story.  Peter has his chosen
+already; it is to be--a dog.
+
+Whenever Saint Margaret's Senior Surgeon finds a hip or a heart or a
+back that he can do nothing for, he sends it to the Home; and he always
+writes the same thing:
+
+"Here is another case in a thousand for you, Margaret MacLean.  How
+many are there now?"
+
+He has married the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee, as the Disagreeable
+Trustee prophesied, and gossip says that they are very happy.  This
+much I know--there are two more words which he now writes with
+capitals--Son and Sympathy.
+
+Margaret MacLean often says with the Danish faery-man: "My life, too,
+is a faery-tale written by God's finger."  And the House Surgeon always
+chuckles at this, and adds:
+
+"Praise Heaven!  He wrote me into it."
+
+As for the widow of the Richest Trustee, she has found a greater
+measure of contentment than she thought the world could hold--with love
+to brim it; for Margaret MacLean has adopted her along with the
+children.  The children still regard her, however, as a very mysterious
+person; and she has taken the place of Susan's mythical aunt in the
+ward conversation.  It has never been argued out to the complete
+satisfaction of every one whether she is really the faery queen or just
+the "Wee Gray Woman," as Sandy calls her.  The arguments wax hot at
+times, and it is Bridget who generally has to put in the final
+silencing word:
+
+"Faith, she kept her promise, didn't she?  and everything come thrue,
+hasn't it?  Well, what more do ye want?"
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRIMROSE RING***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Primrose Ring, by Ruth Sawyer
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Primrose Ring
+
+
+Author: Ruth Sawyer
+
+Release Date: March 27, 2005  [eBook #15482]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRIMROSE RING***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+THE PRIMROSE RING
+
+by
+
+RUTH SAWYER
+
+Illustrated
+
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+New York & London
+
+1915
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  To
+
+  The Little Mother
+  this book in memory of the
+  Primrose Ring
+  she wove for me once on a time
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+DEAR PEOPLE,--Whoever you are and wherever you may be when you take up
+this book--I beg of you not to feel disturbed because I have let Fancy
+and a faery or two slip in between the covers.  You will find them
+quite harmless and friendly--and very eager to become acquainted.
+
+Furthermore, please do not search about for Saint Margaret's; it does
+not exist.  I shamelessly confess to the building of it myself, using
+my right of authorship to bring a stone from this place, and a cornice
+from that, to cap the foundation I discovered long ago--when I was a
+child.  In a like manner have I furnished its board of trustees.  Do
+not misjudge them; remember that when one is so careless as to let
+Fancy and faeries into a book she is forced to let the stepmothers be
+unkind and the giants cruel.
+
+I should like to remind those who may be forgetting that Tir-na-n'Og is
+the land of eternal youth and joyousness--the Celtic "Land of Heart's
+Desire."  It is a country which belongs to us all by right of natural
+heritage; but we turned our backs to it and started journeying from it
+almost the instant we stepped out of our cradles.
+
+As for the primrose ring--reach across it to Bridget and let her give
+you back again the heart of a child which you may have lost somewhere
+along the road of Growing-Old-and-Wise.
+
+    R. S.
+
+THE PRIMROSE RING
+
+
+I
+
+CONCERNING FANCY AND SAINT MARGARET'S
+
+Would it ever have happened at all if Trustee Day had not fallen on the
+30th of April--which is May Eve, as everybody knows?
+
+This is something you must ask of those wiser than I, for I am only the
+story-teller, sitting in the shadow of the market-place, passing on the
+tale that comes to my ears.  But I can remind you that May Eve is one
+of the most bewitched and bewitching times of the whole year--reason
+enough to account for any number of strange happenings; and I can point
+out to your notice that Margaret MacLean, in charge of Ward C at Saint
+Margaret's, found the flower-seller at the corner of the street that
+morning with his basket full of primroses.  Now primroses are "gentle
+flowers," as everybody ought to know--which means that the faeries have
+been using them for thousands of years to work magic; and Margaret
+MacLean bought the full of her hands that morning.
+
+And this brings us back to Trustee Day at Saint Margaret's--which fell
+on the 30th of April--and to the beginning of the story.
+
+
+Saint Margaret's Free Hospital for Children does not belong to the
+city.  It was built by a rich man as a memorial to his son, a little
+crippled lad who stayed just long enough to leave behind as a legacy
+for his father a great crying hunger to minister to all little ailing
+and crippled bodies.  There are golden tales concerning those first
+years of the hospital--tales passed on by word of mouth alone and so
+old as to have gathered a bit of the misty glow of illusion that hangs
+over all myths and traditions.  They made of Saint Margaret's an
+arcadian refuge, where the Founder wandered all day and every day like
+a patron saint.  Tradition endowed him with all the attributes of all
+saints belonging to childhood: the protectiveness of Saint Christopher,
+the tenderness of Saint Anthony, the loving comradeship of Saint
+Valentine, and the joyfulness of Saint Nicholas.
+
+But that was more than fifty years ago; and institutions can change
+marvelously in half a century.  Time had buried more than the Founder.
+
+The rich still support Saint Margaret's.  Society gives bazars and
+costumed balls for it annually; great artists give benefit concerts;
+bankers, corporation presidents, and heiresses send liberal checks once
+a year--and from this last group are chosen the trustees.  They have
+made of Saint Margaret's the best-appointed hospital in the city.  It
+is supplied with everything money and power can obtain; leading
+surgeons are listed on its staff; its nurses rank at the head.  It has
+outspanned the greatest dream of the Founder--professionally.  And
+twelve times a year--at the end of every month--the trustees hold their
+day; which means that all through the late afternoon, until the
+business meeting at five-thirty, they wander over the building.
+
+Now it is the business of institutional directors to be thorough, and
+the trustees of Saint Margaret's, previous to the 30th of April, never
+forgot their business.  They looked into corners and behind doors to
+see what had not been done; they followed the work-trails of every
+employee--from old Cassie, the scrub-woman, to the Superintendent
+herself; and if one was a wise employee one blazed conspicuously and
+often.  They gathered in little groups and discussed methods for
+conservation and greater efficiency, being as up to date in their
+charities as in everything else.  Also, they brought guests and showed
+them about; for when one was rich and had put one's money into
+collections of sick and crippled children instead of old ivories and
+first editions, it did not at all mean that one had not retained the
+same pride of exhibiting.
+
+There are a few rare natures who make collections for the sheer love of
+the objects they collect, and if they can be persuaded to show them off
+at all it is always with so much tenderness and sympathy that even the
+feelings of a delicately wrought Buddha could not be bruised.  But
+there were none of these natures numbered among the trustees of Saint
+Margaret's.  And because it was purely a matter of charity and pride
+with them, and because they never had any time left over from being
+thorough and business-like to spend on the children themselves, they
+never failed to leave a shaft of gloom behind them on Trustee Day.  The
+contagious ward always escaped by virtue of its own power of
+self-defense; but the shaft started at the door of the surgical ward
+and went widening along through the medical and the convalescent until
+it reached the incurables at an angle of indefinite radiation.  There
+was a reason for this--as Margaret MacLean put it once in paraphrase:
+
+"Children come and children go, but we stay on for ever."
+
+Trustee Day was an abiding memory only with the incurables; which meant
+that twelve times a year--at the end of every month--Ward C cried
+itself to sleep.
+
+Spring could not have begun the day better.  She is never the
+spendthrift that summer is, but once in a while she plunges recklessly
+into her treasure-store and scatters it broadcast.  On this last day of
+April she was prodigal with her sunshine; out countryward she garnished
+every field and wood and hollow with her best.  Everywhere were flowers
+and pungent herby things in such abundance that even the city folk
+could sense them afar off.
+
+Little cajoling breezes scuttled around corners and down
+thoroughfares, blowing good humor in and bad humor out.  Birds of
+passage--song-sparrows, tanagers, bluebirds, and orioles--even a pair
+of cardinals--stopped wherever they could find a tree or bush from
+which to pipe a friendly greeting.  Yes, spring certainly could not
+have begun the day better; it was as if everything had said to itself,
+"We know this is a very special occasion and we must do our share in
+making it fine."
+
+So well did everything succeed that Margaret MacLean was up and out of
+Saint Margaret's a full half-hour earlier than usual, her heart singing
+antiphonally with the birds outside.  Coatless, but capped and in her
+gray uniform, she jumped the hospital steps, two at a time, and danced
+the length of the street.
+
+Now Margaret MacLean was small and slender, and there was nothing
+grotesque in the dancing.  It had become a natural means of expressing
+the abundant life and joyousness she had felt ever since she had been
+free of crutches and wheeled chairs; and an impartial stranger, had he
+been passing, would have watched her with the same uncritical delight
+that he might have bestowed on any wood creature had it suddenly
+appeared darting along the pavement.  She reached the corner just in
+time to bump into the flower-seller, who was turning about like some
+old tabby to settle himself and his basket.
+
+"Oh!" she cried in dismay, for the flower-seller was wizened and
+unsteady of foot, and she had sent him spinning about in a dizzy
+fashion.  She put out a steadying hand.  "Oh . . . !"  This time it was
+in ecstasy; she had spied the primroses in the basket just as the
+sunshine splashed over the edge of the corner building straight down
+upon them.  Margaret MacLean dropped to one knee and laid her cheek
+against them.  "The happy things--you can hear them laugh!  I want
+all--all I can carry."  She looked up quizzically at the flower-seller.
+"Now how did you ever happen to think of bringing these--to-day?"
+
+A pair of watery old eyes twinkled, thereby becoming amazingly young in
+an instant, and he wagged his head mysteriously while he raised a
+significant finger.  "Sure, wasn't I knowin', an' could I be afther
+bringin' anythin' else?  But the rest that passes--or stops--will see
+naught but yellow flowers in a basket, I'm thinkin'."  And the
+flower-seller set to shaking his head sorrowfully.
+
+"Perhaps not.  There are the children--"
+
+"Aye, the childher; but the most o' them be's gettin' too terrible
+wise."
+
+"I know--I know--but mine aren't.  I'm going to take my children back
+as many as I can carry."  She stretched both hands about a mass of
+stems--all they could compass.  "See"--she held up a giant bunch--"so
+much happiness is worth a great deal.  Feel in the pocket of my apron
+and you will find--gold for gold.  It was the only money I had in my
+purse.  Keep it all, please."  With a nod and a smile she left him,
+dancing her way back along the still deserted street.
+
+"'Tis the faeries' own day, afther all," chuckled the flower-seller as
+he eyed the tiny gold disk in his palm; then he remembered, and called
+after the diminishing figure of the nurse: "Hey, there!  Mind what ye
+do wi' them blossoms.  They be's powerful strong magic."  And he
+chuckled again.
+
+The hall-boy, shorn of uniform and dignity, was outside, polishing
+brasses, when Margaret MacLean reached the hospital door.  She stopped
+for an interchange of grins and greetings.
+
+"Mornin', Miss Peggie."
+
+"Morning, Patsy."
+
+He was "Patrick" to the rest of Saint Margaret's; no one else seemed to
+realize that he was only about one-fifth uniform and the other fifths
+were boy--small boy at that.
+
+She eyed his work critically.  "That's right--polish them well, Patsy.
+They must shine especially bright to-day."
+
+"Why, what's happenin' to-day?"
+
+"Oh--everything, and--nothing at all."
+
+And she passed on through the door with a most mysterious smile,
+thereby causing Patsy to mentally comment:
+
+"My, don't she beat all!  More'n half the time a feller don't know what
+she's kiddin' about; but, gee! don't he like it!"
+
+As it happened the primroses did not get as far as Ward C then.
+Margaret MacLean found the door of the board-room ajar, and, glancing
+in, looked square into the eyes of the Founder of Saint Margaret's,
+where he hung in his great gold frame--silent and questioning.
+
+"If all the tales they tell about you are true, you must wonder what
+has happened to Saint Margaret's since you turned it over to a board of
+trustees."
+
+She went in and stood close to him, smiling wistfully.  "Perhaps you
+would like me to leave you the primroses until after the meeting--they
+would be sure to cheer you up; and they might--they might--"  Laughing,
+she went over to the President's desk and put the flowers in the green
+Devonshire bowl.
+
+She was sitting in the President's chair, coaxing some of the hoydenish
+blossoms into place, when the House Surgeon looked in a moment later.
+
+"Hello!  What are you doing?  I thought you detested this room."  He
+spoke in a teasing, big-brother way, while his eyes dwelt pleasurably
+on the small gray figure in the President's chair.  For, be it said
+without partiality or prejudice, Margaret MacLean was beautiful, with a
+beauty altogether free from self-appraisement.
+
+"I do--I hate it!"  Then she wagged her head and raised a significant
+finger in perfect imitation of the flower-seller.  "I am dabbling
+in--magic.  I am starting here a terrible and insidious campaign
+against gloom."
+
+The House Surgeon looked amused.  "You make me shiver, all right; but I
+haven't the smallest guess coming.  Would you mind putting it into
+scientific American?"
+
+"I'm afraid I couldn't.  But I can make a plain statement in
+prose--this is Trustee Day."
+
+"Hell!"  The House Surgeon walked over to the calendar on the desk to
+verify the fact.  "Well, what are you going to do about it?"
+
+Margaret MacLean spread her hands over the primroses, indicatively.  "I
+told you--magic."  She wrinkled up her forehead into a worrisome frown.
+"Let me see; I counted them, up last night, and I have had two hundred
+and twenty-eight Trustee Days in my life.  I have tried about
+everything else--philosophy, Christianity, optimism, mental sclerosis,
+and missionary fever; but never magic.  Don't you think it
+sounds--hopeful?"
+
+The House Surgeon laughed.  "You are the funniest little person I ever
+knew.  On duty you're as old as Methuselah and as wise as Hippocrates,
+but the rest of the time I believe your feet are eternally treading the
+nap off antique wishing-carpets.  I wonder how many you've worn out.
+As for that head of yours, it bobs like a penny balloon among the
+clouds looking for--"
+
+"Faeries?" suggested Margaret MacLean.
+
+"That just about hits it.  Will you please tell me how you, of all
+people, ever evolved these--ideas--out of Saint Margaret's?"
+
+A grim smile tightened the corners of her mouth while she looked across
+the room to the portrait that hung opposite the Founder's--the portrait
+of the Old Senior Surgeon.  "I had to," she said at last.  "When a
+person is born with absolutely nothing--nothing of the human things a
+human baby is entitled to--she has to evolve something to live in; a
+sort of sea-urchin affair with spines of make-believe sticking out all
+over it to keep prodding away life as it really is.  If she didn't the
+things she had missed would flatten her out into a flabby pulp--just
+skin and feelings."
+
+"And so you make believe that Trustee Day isn't really bad?"
+
+"Oh dear, no!  But I keep believing it's going to be much better.  Did
+you ever think what it could be like--if the trustees would only make
+it something more than--a matter of business?  Why, it could be as good
+as any faery-tale come true, with a dozen god-parents instead of one;
+and think of the wonderful things they could do it they tried.
+Think--think--and, oh, the fun of it!"
+
+She broke off with a little shivering ache.  When the picture became so
+alive that it pulled at one's heart-strings, it was time to stop.  But
+the next moment she was laughing merrily.
+
+"Do you know, when I was a little tad and couldn't sleep at night with
+the pain, I used to make believe I was a 'truster' and say over to
+myself all the nice, comforting things I wished they would say.  It
+began to sound so real that one day I answered--just as if some one had
+said something pleasant."
+
+"Well?" interrogated the House Surgeon, much amused.
+
+"Well, it was the Oldest Trustee, of course; and she raised those
+lorgnettes and reminded me that a good child never spoke unless she was
+spoken to.  I suppose it will take lots and lots of magic to turn them
+into god-parents."
+
+"Look here," and the House Surgeon reached across the desk and took a
+firm, big-brother grip of her hands, "faery-tales have to have
+stepmothers as well as godmothers--think of it that way.  And remember
+that those kiddies of yours were never born to ride in pumpkin coaches."
+
+"But I'm not reaching out for faery luxuries for them.  I want them to
+be children--plain, happy, laughing children--with as normal a heritage
+as we can scrape together for them.  All it needs is the magic of a
+little human understanding.  That's the most potent magic in the whole
+world.  Why, it can do anything!"
+
+A little-girl look came into Margaret MacLean's face.  It always did
+when she was wanting anything very much or was thinking about something
+very intensely.  It was the hardest kind of a look to resist.  She had
+often threshed this subject out with the House Surgeon before; for it
+was her theory that when a body's material condition was rather poor
+and meager there was all the more reason for scraping together what one
+could of a spiritual heritage and living thereby.
+
+"And don't you see," she had urged, at least a score of times,
+"if we could only teach all the cripples to let their minds
+run--free-limbed--over hilltops and pleasant places, their natures
+would never need to warp and wither after the fashion of their poor
+bodies.  And the time to begin is in childhood, when the mind is
+learning to walk alone."
+
+Usually the House Surgeon was easily convinced to the Margaret MacLean
+side of any argument; but this time, for reasons of his own, he turned
+an unsympathetic and stubborn ear.  He was coming to believe very
+strongly that all this fanciful optimism was so much laughing-gas, with
+only a passing power, and when the effect wore off there would be the
+Dickens to pay.  He did not want to see Margaret MacLean turn into a
+bitter-minded woman of the world--stripped of her trust and her dreams.
+He--all of them--had need of her as she was.  Her belief in the
+ultimate good of things and persons, however, was beyond power of human
+achievement; and the surest cure for disappointments was to amputate
+all expectations.  So the House Surgeon hardened his heart and became
+as professionally severe as he knew how to be.
+
+"It's absolutely impossible to expect a group of incurable children in
+an institution to be made as normal and happy as other children.  It
+can't be done.  Those kiddies are up against a pretty hard proposition,
+I know; but the kindest thing you can do for them is to toughen them
+into not feeling--"
+
+The nurse in charge of Ward C wrenched away her hands fiercely.
+"You're just like the Senior Surgeon.  He thinks the whole dependent
+world--the sick and the poor and the incompetent--have no business with
+ideas or feelings of their own.  He's always saying, 'Train it out of
+them; train it out of them; and it will make it easier for institutions
+to take care of them.'  It's for ever the 'right of the strong' with
+him.  Unless you are able to take care of yourself you are not entitled
+to the ordinary privileges of a human being."
+
+"I'm not at all like the Senior Surgeon.  I don't mean that, and you
+know it.  What I am trying to make you understand is that these kiddies
+can't keep you always; some time they will have to learn to do without
+you.  When that happens it will come tough on them.  It would come
+tough on anybody; and the square thing for you to do is to stop
+being--so all-fired adorable."  The House Surgeon flung back his head
+and marched out of the board-room, slamming the door.
+
+Behind the slammed door Margaret MacLean eyed the primroses
+suspiciously.  "I wonder--is your magic working all right to-day?
+Please--please don't weave any charms against him, little faery people.
+He is the only other grown-up person who has ever understood the least
+bit; and I couldn't bear to lose him, too."
+
+For the second time that morning she nestled her cheek against the
+blossoms.  Then the clock on the hospital tower struck eight.  She
+jumped with a start.  "Time to go on duty."  Once again her eyes met
+the eyes of the Founder and sparkled witchingly.  She raised high the
+green Devonshire bowl from the President's desk as for a toast.
+
+"Here's to Saint Margaret's--as you founded her; and the children--as
+you meant them to be; and here's to the one who first understood!" She
+turned from the Founder to the portrait hanging opposite, and bowed
+most worshipfully to the Old Senior Surgeon.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+IN WHICH MARGARET MACLEAN REVIEWS A MEMORY
+
+As Margaret MacLean climbed the stairs to Ward C--she rarely took the
+lift, it was too remindful of the time when she could not climb
+stairs--her mind thought back a step for each step she mounted.  When
+she had reached the top of the first flight she was a child again, back
+in one of the little white iron cribs in her own ward; and it was the
+day when the first stringent consciousness came to her that she hated
+Trustee Day.
+
+The Old Senior Surgeon--the present one, of whom Saint Margaret's felt
+inordinately proud, was house surgeon then--had come into Ward C for a
+peep at her, and had called out, according to a firmly established
+custom, "Hello, Thumbkin!  What's the news?"
+
+She had been "Thumbkin" to him ever since the night he had carried her
+into the hospital, a tiny mite of a baby; and he had woven out of her
+coming a marvelous story--fancy-fashioned.  This he had told her at
+least twice a week, from the time she was old enough to ask for it,
+because it had popped into his head quite suddenly that this morsel of
+humanity would some day insist on being accounted for.
+
+The bare facts concerning her were rather shabby ones.  She had been
+unceremoniously dumped into his arms by a delegate from the Foundling
+Asylum, who had found him the most convenient receptacle nearest the
+door; and he had been offered the meager information that she belonged
+to no one, was wrong somehow, and a hospital was the place for her.
+
+One hardly likes to pass on shabby garments, much less shabby facts, to
+cover another's past.  So the Old Senior Surgeon had forestalled her
+inquisitiveness with a tale adorned with all the pretty imaginings that
+he, "a clumsy-minded old gruffian," could conjure up.
+
+Margaret MacLean remembered the story--word for word--as we remember
+"The House That Jack Built."  It began with the Old Senior Surgeon
+himself, who heard a pair of birds disputing in one of the two trees
+which sentineled the hospital.  They had built a nest therein; it was
+bedtime, and they wished to retire, only something prevented.  Upon
+investigation he discovered the cause--"and there you were, my dear, no
+bigger than my thumb!"
+
+This was the nucleus of the story; but the Old Senior Surgeon had
+rolled it about, hither and yon, adding adventure after adventure,
+until it had assumed gigantic proportions.  As she grew older she took
+a hand in the adventure-making herself, he supplying the bare plot, she
+weaving the threads therefrom into a detailed narrative which she
+retold to him later, with a few imaginings of her own added.  This is
+what had established the custom for the Old Senior Surgeon to take a
+peep into Ward C at day's end and call across to her: "Hello, Thumbkin!
+What's the news?" or, "What's happened next?"  And until this day the
+answer had always been a joyous one.
+
+Margaret MacLean, grown, could look back at tiny Margaret MacLean and
+see her very clearly as she straightened up in the little iron crib and
+answered in a shrill, tense voice: "I'm not Thumbkin.  I'm a foundling.
+I don't belong to anybody.  I never had any father or mother or
+nothing, but just a hurt back; they said so.  They stood right
+there--two of them; and one told the other all about me."
+
+This was the end of the story, and the beginning of Trustee Days for
+Margaret MacLean.
+
+She soon made the discovery that she was not the only child in the ward
+who felt about it that way.  Her discovery was a matter of intuition
+rather than knowledge; for--as if by silent consent--the topic was
+carefully avoided in the usual ward conversation.  One does not make it
+a rule to talk about the hobgoblins that lurk in the halls at night, or
+the gray, creeping shapes that come out of dark corners and closets
+after one has gone to bed, if one is so pitifully unfortunate as to
+possess these things in childhood.  Instead one just remembers and
+waits, shivering.  Only to old Cassie, the scrub-woman, who was young
+Cassie then, did she confide her fear.  From her she received a
+charm--compounded of goose eggshells and vinegar--which Cassie claimed
+to be what they used in Ireland to unbewitch changelings.  She kept the
+charm hidden for months under her pillow.  It proved comforting,
+although absolutely ineffectual.
+
+And for months there had been a strained relationship between the Old
+Senior Surgeon and herself, causing them both much embarrassment.  She
+resented the story he had made for her with all her child soul; he had
+cheated her--fooled her.  She felt much as we felt toward our parents
+when we made our first discovery concerning Santa Claus.
+
+But after a time--a long time--the story came to belong to her again;
+she grew to realize that the Old Senior Surgeon had told it
+truthfully--only with the unconscious tongue of the poet instead of the
+grim realist.  She found out as well that it had done a wonderful thing
+for her: it had turned life into an adventure--a quest upon which one
+was bound to depart, no matter how poorly one's feet might be shod or
+how persistently the rain and wind bit at one's marrow through the rags
+of a conventional cloak.  More than this--it had colored the road ahead
+for her, promising pleasant comradeship and good cheer; it would keep
+her from ever losing heart or turning back.
+
+A day came at last when she and the Old Senior Surgeon could laugh--a
+little foolishly, perhaps--over the child-story; and then, just because
+they could laugh at it and feel happy, they told it together all over
+again.  They made much of Thumbkin's christening feast, and the gifts
+the good godmothers brought.
+
+"Let me see," said the Old Senior Surgeon, cocking his head
+thoughtfully, "there was the business-like little party on a
+broomstick, carrying grit--plain grit."
+
+"And the next one brought happiness--didn't she?" asked little Margaret
+MacLean.
+
+He nodded.  "Of course.  Then came a little gray-haired faery with a
+nosegay of Thoughts-for-other-folks, all dried and ready to put away
+like sweet lavender."
+
+"And did the next bring love?"
+
+Again he agreed.  "But after her, my dear, came a comfortable old lady
+in a chaise with a market-basket full of common-sense."
+
+"And then--then--  Oh, couldn't the one after her bring beauty?  Some
+one always did in the book stories.  I think I wouldn't mind the back
+and--other things so much if my face could be nice."
+
+Margaret MacLean, grown, could remember well how tearfully eager little
+Margaret MacLean had been.
+
+The Old Senior Surgeon looked down with an odd, crinkly smile.  "Have
+you never looked into a glass, Thumbkin?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+Children in the wards of free hospitals have no way of telling how they
+look, and perhaps it is better that way.  Only if it happens--as it
+does sometimes--that they spend a good share of their life there, it
+seems as if they never had a chance to get properly acquainted with
+themselves.
+
+For a moment he patted her hand; after which he said, very solemnly:
+"Wait for a year and a day--then look.  You will find out then just
+what the next faery brought."
+
+Margaret MacLean had obeyed this command to the letter.  When the year
+and a day came she had been able to stand on tiptoe and look at herself
+for the first time in her life; and she would never forget the gladness
+of that moment.  It had appeared nothing short of a miracle to her that
+she should actually possess something of which she need not be
+ashamed--something nice to share with the world.  And whenever Margaret
+MacLean thought of her looks at all, which was rare, she thought of
+them in that way.
+
+She took up the memory again where she had dropped it on the second
+flight of stairs, slowly climbing her way to Ward C, and went on with
+the story.
+
+They came to the place where Thumbkin was pricked by the wicked faery
+with the sleeping-thorn and put to sleep for a hundred years, after the
+fashion of many another story princess; and the Old Senior Surgeon
+suddenly stopped and looked at her sharply.
+
+"Some day, Thumbkin, I may play the wicked faery and put you to sleep.
+What would you say to that?"
+
+She did not say--then.
+
+More months passed, months which brought an ashen, drawn look to the
+face of the Old Senior Surgeon, and a tired-out droop to his shoulders
+and eyes.  She began to notice that the nurses eyed him pityingly
+whenever he came into the ward, and the house surgeon shook his head
+ominously.  She wondered what it meant; she wondered more when he came
+at last to remind her of his threatened promise.
+
+"You remember, Thumbkin, about that sleep?  Would you let an old faery
+doctor put you to sleep, for a little while, if he was very sure you
+would wake up to find happiness--and health--and love--and all the
+other gifts the godmothers brought?"
+
+She tried her best to keep the frightened look out of her eyes.  By the
+way he watched her, however, she knew some of it must have crept in.
+"Operation?" she managed to choke out at last.
+
+Operation was a fairly common word in Ward C, and not an over-hopeful
+one.
+
+"It's this way, Thumbkin; and let's make a bargain of it.  I think
+there's a cure for that back of yours.  It hasn't been tried very much;
+about often enough to make it worth while for us to take a chance.
+I'll be honest with you and tell you the house surgeon doesn't think it
+can be done; but that's where the bargain comes in.  He thinks he can
+mend my trouble, and I don't; and we're both dreadfully greedy to prove
+we're right.  Now if you will give me my way with you I will give him
+his.  But you must come first."
+
+"A hundred years is a long time to be asleep," she objected.
+
+"Bless you, it won't be a hundred minutes."
+
+"And does your back need it, too?"
+
+"Not my back; my stomach.  It's about the only chance for either of us,
+Thumbkin."
+
+"And you won't unless I do?"
+
+The Old Senior Surgeon gave his head a terrific shake; then he caught
+her small hands in his great, warm, comforting ones.  "Think.  It means
+a strong back; a pair of sturdy little legs to take you anywhere; and
+the whole world before you!"
+
+"And you'll have them, too?"
+
+He smiled convincingly.
+
+"All right.  Let's."  She gave his hand a hard, trustful squeeze.
+
+She liked to remember that squeeze.  She often wondered if it might not
+have helped him to do what he had to do.
+
+Her operation was record-making in its success; and after he had seen
+her well on the mend he gave himself over to the house surgeon and a
+fellow-colleague, according to the bargain.  He proved the house
+surgeon wrong, for he never rallied.  Undoubtedly he knew this would be
+the way of it; for he stopped in Ward C before he went up to the
+operating-room and said to her:
+
+"I shall be sleeping longer than you did, Thumbkin; but, never fear, I
+shall be waking some time, somewhere.  And remember this: Never grow so
+strong and well that you forget how tiresome a hospital crib can be.
+Never be so happy that you grow blind to the heartaches of other
+children; and never wander so far away from Saint Margaret's that you
+can't come back, sometimes, and make a story for some one else."
+
+She puzzled a good bit over this, especially the first part of it; but
+when they told her the next day, she understood.  Probably she grieved
+for him more than had any one else; even more than the members of his
+own family or profession.  For, whereas there are many people in the
+world who can give life to others, there are but few who can help
+others to possess it.
+
+What childhood she had had she left behind her soon after this, along
+with her aching back, her helpless limbs, and the little iron crib in
+Ward C.
+
+On the first Trustee Day following her complete recovery she appeared,
+at her own request, before the meeting of the board.  In a small,
+frightened voice she asked them to please send her away to school.  She
+wanted to learn enough to come back to Saint Margaret's and be a nurse.
+
+The trustees consented.  Having assumed the responsibility of her
+well-being for over fifteen years, they could not very easily shirk it
+now.  Furthermore, was it not a praise-worthy tribute to Saint
+Margaret's as a charitable institution, and to themselves as trustees,
+that this child whom they had sheltered and helped to cure should
+choose this way of showing her gratitude?  Verily, the board pruned and
+plumed itself well that day.
+
+All this Margaret MacLean lived over again as she climbed the stairs to
+Ward C on the 30th of April, her heart glowing warm with the memory of
+this man who had first understood; who had freed her mind from the
+abnormality of her body and the stigma of her heritage; who had made it
+possible for her to live wholesomely and deeply; and who had set her
+feet upon a joyous mission.  For the thousandth time she blessed that
+memory.
+
+It had been no disloyalty on her part that she had closed her lips and
+said nothing when the House Surgeon had questioned her about her
+fancy-making.  She could never get away from the feeling that some of
+the sweetness and sacredness might be lost with the telling of the
+memory.  One is so apt to cheapen a thing when one tries hastily to put
+it into words, and ever afterward it is never quite the same.
+
+On the second floor she stopped; and by chance she looked over, between
+spiral banisters, to the patch of hallway below.  It just happened that
+the House Surgeon was standing there, talking with one of the internes.
+
+Margaret MacLean smiled whimsically.  "If there is a soul in the wide
+world I could share it with, it is the House Surgeon."  And then she
+added, aloud, softly apostrophizing the top of his head, "I think some
+day you might grow to be very--very like the Old Senior Surgeon; that
+is, if you would only stop trying to be like the present one."
+
+[Illustration: "If there is a soul in the wide world I could share it
+with, it is the House Surgeon."]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+WARD C
+
+A welcoming shout went up from Ward C as Margaret MacLean entered.  It
+was lusty enough to have come from the throats of healthy children, and
+it would have sounded happily to the most impartial ears; to the nurse
+in charge it was a very pagan of gladness.
+
+"Wish you good morning, good meals, and good manners," laughed Margaret
+MacLean; and then she went from crib to crib with a special greeting
+for each one.  Oh, she firmly believed that a great deal depended on
+how the day began.
+
+In the first crib lay Pancho, of South American parentage, partially
+paralyzed and wholly captivating.  He had been in Saint Margaret's
+since babyhood--he was six now--and had never worn anything but a
+little hospital shirt.
+
+"Good morning, Brown Baby," she said, kissing his forehead.  "It's just
+the day for you out on the sun-porch; and you'll hear birds--lots of
+them."
+
+"Wobins?"
+
+"Yes, and bluebirds, too.  I've heard them already."
+
+Next came Sandy--merry of heart--a humpback laddie from Aberdeen.  His
+parents had gone down with the steerage of a great ocean liner, and
+society had cared for him until the first horror of the tragedy had
+passed; then some one fortunately had mentioned Saint Margaret's, and
+society was relieved of its burden.  In the year he had spent here his
+Aberdonian burr had softened somewhat and a number of American
+colloquialisms had crept into his speech; but for all that he was "the
+braw canny Scot"--as the House Surgeon always termed him--and he
+objected to kisses.  So the good-morning greeting was a hearty
+hand-shake between the two--comrade fashion.
+
+"It wad be a bonnie day i' Aberdeen," he reminded her, blithely.  "But
+'tis no the robins there 'at wad be singin'."
+
+"Shall I guess?"
+
+"Na, I'll tell ye.  Laverocks!"
+
+"Really, Sandy?"  And then she suddenly remembered something.  "Now you
+guess what you're going to have for supper to-night."
+
+"Porridge?"
+
+"No; scones!"
+
+"Bully!"  And Sandy clapped his hands ecstatically.
+
+Beside Sandy lay Susan--smart, shrewd, and American, with braced legs
+and back, and a philosophy that failed her only on Trustee Days.  But
+as calendars are not kept in Ward C no one knew what this day was; and
+consequently Susan was grinning all over her pinched, gnome-like little
+face.  Margaret MacLean kissed her on both cheeks; the Susan-kind
+hunger for affection, but the world rarely finds it out and therefore
+gives sparingly.
+
+"Guess yer couldn't guess what I dreamt last night, Miss Peggie?"
+
+"About the aunt?"  This was a mythical relation of Susan's who lived
+somewhere and who was supposed to turn up some day and claim Susan with
+open arms.  She was the source of many dreams and of much interested
+conversation and heated argument in the ward, and the children had her
+pictured down to the smallest detail of person and clothes.
+
+"No, 'tain't my aunt this time.  I dreamt you was gettin' married, Miss
+Peggie."  And Susan giggled delightedly.
+
+"An' goin' away?"  This was groaned out in chorus from the two cots
+following Susan's, wherein lay James and John--fellow-Apostles of
+pain--bound closely together in that spiritual brotherhood.  They were
+sitting up, holding hands and staring at Margaret with wide,
+anguish-filled eyes.
+
+"Of course I'm not going away, little brothers; and I'm not going to
+get married.  Does any one ever get married in Saint Margaret's?"
+
+The Apostles thought very hard about it for a moment; but as it had
+never happened before, of course it never would now, and Miss Peggie
+was safe.
+
+The whole ward smiled again.  But in that moment Margaret MacLean
+remembered what the House Surgeon had said, and wondered.  Was she
+building up for them an ultimate discontent in trying to make life
+happy and full for them now?  Could not minds like theirs be taught to
+walk alone, after all?  And then she laughed to herself for worrying.
+Why should the children ever have to do without her--unless--unless
+something came to them far better--like Susan's mythical aunt?  The
+children need never leave Saint Margaret's as long as they lived, and
+she never should; and she passed on to the next cot, content that all
+was well.
+
+As she stooped over the bed a pair of thin little arms flew out and
+clasped themselves tightly about her neck; a head with a shock of red
+curls buried itself in the folds of the gray uniform.  This was
+Bridget--daughter of the Irish sod, oldest of the ward, general
+caretaker and best beloved; although it should be added in justice to
+both Bridget and Margaret MacLean that the former had no consciousness
+of it, and the latter took great care to hide it.
+
+[Illustration: As she stooped over the bed a pair of thin little arms
+flew out and clasped themselves tightly about her neck.]
+
+It was Bridget who read to the others when no one else could; it was
+Bridget who remembered some wonderful story to tell on those days when
+Sandy's back was particularly bad or the Apostles grew over-despondent;
+and it was Bridget who laughed and sang on the gray days when the sun
+refused to be cheery.  Undoubtedly it was because of all these things
+that her cot was in the center of Ward C.
+
+Concerning Bridget herself, hers was a case of arsenical poisoning,
+slowly absorbed while winding daisy-stems for an East Broadway
+manufacturer of cheap artificial flowers.  She had done this for three
+years--since she was five--thereby helping her mother to support
+themselves and two younger children.  She was ten now and the Senior
+Surgeon had already reckoned her days.
+
+In the shadow of Bridget's cot was Rosita's crib--Rosita being the
+youngest, the most sensitive, and the most given to homesickness.  This
+last was undoubtedly due to the fact that she was the only child in the
+incurable ward blessed in the matter of a home.  Her parents were
+honest-working Italians who adored her, but who were too ignorant and
+indulgent to keep her alive.  They came every Sunday, and sat out the
+allotted time for visitors beside her crib, while the other children
+watched in a silent, hungry-eyed fashion.
+
+Margaret MacLean passed her with a kiss and went on to
+Peter--Peter--seven years old--congenital hip disease--and all boy.
+
+"Hello, you!" he shouted, squirming under the kiss that he would not
+have missed for anything.
+
+"Hello, you!" answered back the administering nurse, and then she
+asked, solemnly, "How's Toby?"
+
+"He's--he's fine.  That soap the House Surgeon give me cured his fleas
+all up."
+
+Toby was even more mythical than Susan's aunt; she was based on certain
+authentic facts, whereas Toby was solely the creation of a dog-adoring
+little brain.  But no one was ever inconsiderate enough to hint at his
+airy fabrication; and Margaret MacLean always inquired after him every
+morning with the same interest that she bestowed on the other occupants
+of Ward C.
+
+Last in the ward came Michael, a diminutive Russian exile with valvular
+heart trouble and a most atrocious vocabulary.  The one seemed as
+incurable as the other.  Margaret MacLean had wrestled with the
+vocabulary on memorable occasions--to no avail; and although she had
+long since discovered it was a matter of words and not meanings with
+him, it troubled her none the less.  And because Michael came the
+nearest to being the black sheep of this sanitary fold she showed for
+him always an unfailing gentleness.
+
+"Good morning, dear," she said, running her fingers through the
+perpendicular curls that bristled continuously.
+
+"Goot mornun, tear," he mimicked, mischievously; and then he added,
+with an irresistible smile, "Und Got-tam-you."
+
+"Oh, Michael, don't you remember, the next time you were going to say
+'God bless you'?"
+
+"Awright--next time."
+
+Margaret MacLean sighed unconsciously.  Michael's "next time" was about
+as reliable as the South American _manana_; and he seemed as much an
+alien now as the day he was brought into the ward.  And then, because
+she believed that kindness was the strongest weapon for victory in the
+end, she did the thing Michael loved best.
+
+Ward C was turned into a circus menagerie, and Margaret MacLean and her
+assistant were turned into keepers.  Together they set about the duties
+for the day with great good-humor.  Two seals, a wriggling
+hippopotamus, a roaring polar bear, a sea-serpent of surprising
+activities, two teeth-grinding alligators, a walrus, and a baby
+elephant were bathed with considerable difficulty and excitement.  It
+was Sandy who insisted on being the elephant in spite of a heated
+argument from the other animals that, having a hump, he ought to be a
+camel.  They forgave him later, however, when he squirted forth his
+tooth-brush water and trumpeted triumphantly, thereby causing the
+entire menagerie to squirm about and bellow in great glee.
+
+At this point the head keeper had to turn them all back instantly into
+children, and she delivered a firm but gentle lecture on the
+inconsiderateness of soaking a freshly changed bed.
+
+Sandy broke into penitent tears; and because tears were never allowed
+to dampen the atmosphere of Ward C when they could possibly be dammed,
+Margaret MacLean did the "best-of-all-things."  She pushed the cribs
+and cots all together into a "special" with observation-cars; then,
+changing into an engineer, and with a call to Toby to jump aboard, she
+swung herself into the caboose-rocker and opened the throttle.  The
+bell rang; the whistle tooted; and the engine gave a final snort and
+puff, bounding away countryward where spring had come.
+
+Those of you who live where you can always look out on pleasant places,
+or who can travel at will into them, may find it hard to understand how
+wearisome and stupid it grows to be always in one room with an
+encompassing sky-line of roof-tops and chimneys, or may fail to sound
+the full depths of wonder and delight over the ride that Ward C took
+that memorable day.
+
+The engineer pointed out everything--meadows full of flowers, trees
+full of birds, gardens new planted, and corn-fields guarded by
+scarecrows.  She slowed up at the barnyards that the children might
+hear the crowing cocks and clucking hens with their new-hatched broods,
+and see the neighboring pastures with their flocks of sheep and tiny
+lambs.
+
+"A ken them weel--hoo the wee creepits bleeted hame i' Aberdeen!"
+shouted Sandy, bleeting for the whole pastureful.
+
+And when they came to the smallest of mountain brooks the engineer
+followed it, down, down, until it had grown into a stream with
+cowslipped banks; and on and on until it had grown into a river with
+little boats and sandy shore and leaping fish.  Here the engineer
+stopped the train; and every one who wanted to--and there were none who
+did not--went paddling; and some went splashing about just as if they
+could swim.
+
+Back in the "special," they climbed a hilltop, slowly, so that the
+engineer could point out each farm and pasture and stream in miniature
+that they had seen close by.
+
+"That's the wonder of a hilltop," she explained; "you can see
+everything neighboring each other."  And when they reached the crest
+she clapped her hands.  "Oh, children dear, wouldn't it be beautiful to
+build a house on a hilltop just like this to live in always!"
+
+Afterward they rode into deep woods, where the sunlight came down
+through the trees like splashes of gold; and here the engineer
+suggested they should have a picnic.
+
+As Margaret MacLean stepped out into the hall to look up the
+dinner-trays she met the House Surgeon.
+
+"Dreading it as much as usual?" he asked, in the teasing, big-brother
+tone; but he looked at her in quite another way.
+
+She laughed.  "I'm hoping it isn't going to be as bad as the time
+before--and the time before that--and the time before that."  She
+pushed back some moist curls that had slipped out from under her
+cap--engineering was hard work--and the little-girl look came into her
+face.  She looked up mischievously at the House Surgeon.  "You couldn't
+possibly guess what I've been doing all morning."
+
+The House Surgeon wrinkled his forehead in his most professional
+manner.  "Precautionary disinfecting?"
+
+Margaret MacLean laughed again.  "That's an awfully good guess, but
+it's wrong.  I've been administering antitoxin for trusteria."
+
+In spite of her gay assurance before the House Surgeon, however, it was
+rather a sober nurse in charge of Ward C who sat down that afternoon
+with a book of faery-tales on her knee open to the story of "The
+Steadfast Tin Soldier."  As for Ward C, it was supremely happy; its
+beloved "Miss Peggie" was on duty for the afternoon with the favorite
+book for company; moreover, no one had discovered as yet that this was
+Trustee Day and that the trustees themselves were already near at hand.
+
+A shadow fell athwart the threshold that very moment.  Margaret MacLean
+could feel it without taking her eyes from the book, and, purposefully
+unmindful of its presence, she kept reading steadily on:
+
+"'The paper boat was rocking up and down; sometimes it turned round so
+quickly that the Tin Soldier trembled; but he remained firm, he did not
+move a muscle, and looked straight forward, shouldering his musket.'"
+
+"Ah, Miss MacLean, may I speak with you a moment?"  It was the voice of
+the Meanest Trustee.
+
+The nurse in charge rose quickly and met him half-way, hoping to keep
+him and whatever he might have to say as far from the children as
+possible.
+
+The Meanest Trustee continued in a little, short, sharp voice: "The
+cook tells me that the patients in this ward have been having extra
+food prepared for them of late, such as fruit and jellies and scones
+and even ice-cream.  I discovered it for myself.  I saw some pineapples
+in the refrigerator when I was inspecting it this afternoon, and the
+cook said it was your orders."
+
+Margaret MacLean smiled her most ingratiating smile.  "You see," she
+said, eagerly, "the children in this ward get fearfully tired of the
+same things to eat; it is not like the other wards where the children
+stay only a short time.  So I thought it would be nice to have
+something different--once in a while; and then the old things would
+taste all the better--don't you see?  I felt sure the trustees would be
+willing."
+
+"Well, they are not.  It is an entirely unnecessary expense which I
+will not countenance.  The regular food is good and wholesome, and the
+patients ought to feel grateful for it instead of finding fault."
+
+The nurse looked anxiously toward the cots, then dropped her voice half
+an octave lower.
+
+"The children have never found fault; it was just my idea to give them
+a treat when they were not expecting it.  As for the extra expense,
+there has been none; I have paid for everything myself."
+
+The Meanest Trustee readjusted his eye-glasses and looked closer at the
+young woman before him.  "Do you mean to say you paid for them out of
+your own wages?"
+
+The nurse nodded.
+
+"Then all I have to say is that I consider it an extremely idiotic
+performance which had better be stopped.  Children should not be
+indulged."
+
+And he went away muttering something about the poor always remaining
+poor with their foolish notions of throwing away money; and Margaret
+MacLean went back to the book of faery-tales.  But as she was looking
+for the place Sandy grunted forth stubbornly:
+
+"A'm no wantin' ony scones the nicht, so ye maun na fetch them."
+
+And Peter piped out, "Trusterday, ain't it, Miss Peggie?"
+
+"Yes, dear.  Now shall we go on with the story?"
+
+She had read to where the rat was demanding the passport when she
+recognized the President's step outside the door.  In another moment he
+was standing beside her chair, looking at the book on her knee.
+
+"Humph! faery-tales!  Is that not very foolish?  Don't you think, Miss
+Margaret, it would be more suitable to their condition in life if you
+should select--hmm--something like _Pilgrim's Progress_ or _Lives of
+the Saints and Martyrs_?  Something that would be a preparation--so to
+speak--for the future."  He stood facing her now, his back to the
+children.
+
+"Excuse me"--she was smiling up at him--"but I thought this was a
+better preparation."
+
+The President frowned.  He was a much-tried man--a man of charitable
+parts, who directed or presided over thirty organizations.  It took him
+nearly thirty days each month--with the help of two private secretaries
+and a luxurious office--to properly attend to all the work resulting
+therefrom; and the matters in hand were often so trying and perplexing
+that he had to go abroad every other year to avoid a nervous breakdown.
+
+"I think we took up this matter at one of the business meetings," he
+went on, patiently, "and some arrangement was made for one of the
+trustees to come and read the Bible and teach the children their
+respective creeds and catechisms."
+
+Margaret MacLean nodded.  "There was; Miss N----"--and she named the
+Youngest and Prettiest Trustee--"generally comes an hour before the
+meeting and reads to them; but to-day she was detained by a--tango tea,
+I believe.  That's why I chose this."  Her eyes danced unconsciously as
+she tapped the book.
+
+The President looked at her sharply.  "I should think, my dear young
+lady, that you, of all persons, would realize what a very serious thing
+life is to any one in this condition.  Instead of that I fear at times
+that you are--shall I say--flippant?"  He turned about and looked at
+the children.  "How do you do?" he asked, kindly.
+
+"Thank you, sir, we are very well, sir," they chorused in reply.  Saint
+Margaret's was never found wanting in politeness.
+
+The President left; and the nurse in charge of Ward C went on with the
+reading.
+
+"'The Tin Soldier stood up to his neck in water; deeper and deeper sank
+the boat, and the paper became more and more limp; then the water
+closed over him; but the Tin Soldier remained firm and shouldered his
+musket.'"
+
+A group filled the doorway; it was the voice of the Oldest Trustee that
+floated in.  "This, my dear, is the incurable ward; we are very much
+interested in it."
+
+They stood just over the threshold--the Oldest Trustee in advance, her
+figure commanding and unbent, for all her seventy years, and her
+lorgnette raised.  As she was speaking a little gray wisp of a woman
+detached herself from the group and moved slowly down the row of cots.
+
+"Yes," continued the Oldest Trustee, "we have two cases of congenital
+hip disease and three of spinal tuberculosis--that is one of them in
+the second crib."  Her eyes moved on from Sandy to Rosita.  "And the
+fifth patient has such a dreadful case of rheumatism.  Sad, isn't it,
+in so young a child?  Yes, the Senior Surgeon says it is absolutely
+incurable."
+
+Margaret MacLean closed the book with a bang; for five minutes the
+children had been looking straight ahead with big, conscious eyes,
+hearing not a word.  Rebellion gripped at her heart and she rose
+quickly and went over to the group.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to come in and talk to the children?  They are
+rather sober this afternoon; perhaps you could make them laugh."
+
+"Yes, wouldn't you like to go in?" put in the Oldest Trustee.  "They
+are very nice children."
+
+But the visitors shrank back an almost infinitesimal distance; and one
+said, hesitatingly:
+
+"I'm afraid we wouldn't know quite what to say to them."
+
+"Perhaps you would like to see the new pictures for the nurses' room?"
+the nurse in charge suggested, wistfully.
+
+The Oldest Trustee glanced at her with a hint of annoyance.  "We have
+already seen them.  I think you must have forgotten, my dear, that it
+was I who gave them."
+
+With flashing cheeks Margaret MacLean fled from Ward C.  If she had
+stayed long enough to watch the little gray wisp of a woman move
+quietly from cot to cot, patting each small hand and asking, tenderly,
+"And what is your name, dearie?" she might have carried with her a
+happier feeling.  At the door of the board-room she ran into the House
+Surgeon.
+
+"Is it as bad as all that?" he asked after one good look at her.
+
+"It's worse--a hundred times worse!"  She tossed her head angrily.  "Do
+you know what is going to happen some day?  I shall forget who I
+am--and who they are and what they have done for me--and say things
+they will never forgive.  My mind-string will just snap, that's all;
+and every little pestering, forbidden thought that has been kicking its
+heels against self-control and sense-of-duty all these years will come
+tumbling out and slip off the edge of my tongue before I even know it
+is there."
+
+"They are some hot little thoughts, I wager," laughed the House Surgeon.
+
+And then, from the far end of the cross-corridor, came the voice of the
+Oldest Trustee, talking to the group:
+
+". . . such a very sweet girl--never forgets her place or her duty.
+She was brought here from the Foundling Asylum when she was a baby, in
+almost a dying condition.  Every one thought it was an incurable case;
+the doctors still shake their heads over her miraculous recovery.  Of
+course it took years; and she grew up in the hospital."
+
+With a look of dumb, battling anger the nurse in charge of Ward C
+turned from the House Surgeon--her hands clenched--while the voice of
+the Oldest Trustee came back to them, still exhibiting:
+
+"No, we have never been able to find out anything about her parentage;
+undoubtedly she was abandoned.  We named her 'Margaret MacLean,' after
+the hospital and the superintendent who was here then.  Yes, indeed--a
+very, very sad--"
+
+When the Oldest Trustee reached the boardroom it was empty, barring the
+primroses, which were guilelessly nodding in the green Devonshire bowl
+on the President's desk.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+CURABLES AND INCURABLES
+
+No one who entered the board-room that late afternoon remembered that
+it was May Eve; and even had he remembered, it would have amounted to
+nothing more than the mental process of association.  It would not have
+given him the faintest presentiment that at that very moment the Little
+People were busy pressing their cloth-o'-dream mantles and reblocking
+their wishing-caps; that the instant the sun went down the spell would
+be off the faery raths, setting them free all over the world, and that
+the gates of Tir-na-n'Og would be open wide for mortals to wander back
+again.  No, not one of the board remembered; the trustees sat looking
+straight at the primroses and saw nothing, felt nothing, guessed
+nothing.
+
+They were not unusual types of trustees who served on the board of
+Saint Margaret's.  You could find one or more of them duplicated in the
+directors' book of nearly any charitable institution, if you hunted for
+them; the strange part was, perhaps, that they were gathered together
+in a single unit of power.  Besides the Oldest and the Meanest
+Trustees, there were the Executive, the Social, the Disagreeable, the
+Busiest, the Dominating, the Calculating, the Petty, and the Youngest
+and Prettiest.  She came fluttering in a minute late from her tea; and
+right after her came the little gray wisp of a woman, who sat down in a
+chair by the door so unpretentiously as to make it appear as though she
+did not belong among them.  When the others saw her they nodded
+distantly: they had just been talking about her.
+
+It seemed that she was the widow of the Richest Trustee.  The board had
+elected her to fill her husband's place lest the annual check of ten
+thousand--a necessary item on Saint Margaret's books--might not be
+forthcoming; and this was her first meeting.  It was, in fact, her
+first visit to the hospital.  She could never bear to come during her
+husband's trusteeship because, children having been denied her, she had
+wished to avoid them wherever and whenever she could, and spare herself
+the pain their suggestion always brought her.  She would not have come
+now, but that her husband's memory seemed to require it of her.
+
+For years gossip had been busy with the wife of the Richest Trustee--as
+the widow she did not relax her hold.  What the trustees said that day
+they only repeated from gossip: the little gray wisp of a woman was a
+nonentity--nothing more--with the spirit of a mouse.  She held no
+position in society, and what she did with her time or her money no one
+knew.  The trustees smiled inwardly and reckoned silently with
+themselves; at least they would never need to fear opposition from her
+on any matter of importance.
+
+The last person of all to enter the boardroom was the Senior Surgeon.
+The President had evidently waited for him, for he nodded to the House
+Surgeon to close the doors the moment he came.
+
+Now the Senior Surgeon was a man who used capitals for Surgery,
+Science, and Self, unconsciously eliminating them elsewhere.  He had
+begun in Saint Margaret's as house surgeon; and he had grown to be
+considered by many of his own profession the leading man of his day.
+The trustees were as proud of him as they were of the hospital, and it
+has never been recorded in the traditions of Saint Margaret's that the
+Senior Surgeon had ever asked for anything that went ungranted.  He
+seldom attended a board meeting; consequently when he came in at
+five-thirty there was an audible rustle of excitement and the raising
+of anticipatory eyebrows.
+
+When the President called the meeting to order every trustee was
+present, as well as the heads of the four wards, the Superintendent,
+and the two surgeons.  The Senior Surgeon sat next to the President;
+the House Surgeon sat where he could watch equally well the profiles of
+the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee and Margaret MacLean.  His heart had
+always been inclined to intermit; or--as he put it to himself--he
+adored them both in quite opposite ways; and which way was the better
+and more endurable he had never been able to decide.
+
+"In view of the fact," said the President, rising, "that the Senior
+Surgeon can be with us but a short time this afternoon, and that he has
+a grave and vital issue to present to you, we will postpone the regular
+reports until the end of the meeting and take up at once the business
+in hand."  He paused a moment, feeling the dramatic value of his next
+remark.  "For some time the Senior Surgeon has seriously questioned
+the--hmm--advisability of continuing the incurable ward.  He wishes
+very much to bring the matter before you, and he is prepared to give
+you his reasons for so doing.  Afterward, I think it would be wise for
+us to discuss the matter very informally."  He bowed to the Senior
+Surgeon and sat down.
+
+The Meanest Trustee snapped his teeth together in an expression of grim
+satisfaction.  "That ward is costing a lot of unnecessary expense, I
+think," he barked out, sharply, "and it's being run with altogether too
+free a hand."  And he looked meaningly toward Margaret MacLean.
+
+No one paid any particular attention to his remark; they were too
+deeply engrossed in the Senior Surgeon.  And the House Surgeon,
+watching, saw the profile of the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee become
+even prettier as it blushed and turned in witching eagerness toward the
+man who was rising to address the meeting.  The other profile had
+turned rigid and white as a piece of marble.
+
+Now the Senior Surgeon could do a critical major operation in twenty
+minutes; and he could operate on critical issues quite as rapidly.
+Speed was his creed; therefore he characteristically attacked the
+subject in hand without any prefatory remarks.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen of the board, the incurable ward is doing
+nothing.  I can see no possible reason or opportunity for further
+observation or experimentation there.  Every case in it at the present
+time, as well as every Case that is likely to come to us, is as a
+sealed document as far as science is concerned.  They are
+incurable--they will remain incurable for all time."
+
+"How do you know?"  The question came from the set lips of the nurse in
+charge of Ward C.
+
+"How do we know anything in science?  We prove it by undeniable,
+irrevocable facts."
+
+"Even then you are not sure of it.  I was proved incurable--but I got
+well."
+
+"That proves absolutely nothing!"  And the Senior Surgeon growled as he
+always did when things went against his liking.  "You were a case in a
+thousand--in a lifetime.  Because it happened once--here in this
+hospital--is no reason for believing that it will ever happen again."
+
+"Oh yes, it is!" persisted Margaret MacLean.  "There is just as much
+reason for believing as for not believing.  Every one of those
+children, in the ward now might--yes, they might--be a case in a
+thousand; and no one has any right to take that thousandth of a chance
+away from them."
+
+"You are talking nonsense--stupid, irrational nonsense."  And the
+Senior Surgeon glared at her.
+
+The truth was that he had never forgiven her for getting well.  To have
+had a slip of a girl juggle with the most reliable of scientific data,
+as well as with his own undeniable skill as a diagnostician, and grow
+up normally, healthfully perfect, was insufferable.  He had never quite
+forgiven the Old Senior Surgeon for his share in it.  And to have her
+stand against him and his great desire, now, and actually throw this
+thing in his face, was more than he could endure.  He did not know that
+Margaret MacLean was fighting for what she loved most on earth, the one
+thing that seemed to belong to her, the thing that had been given into
+her keeping by the right of a memory bequeathed to her by the man he
+could not save.  Truth to tell, Margaret MacLean had never quite
+forgiven the Senior Surgeon for this, blameless as she knew him to be.
+
+And so for the space of a quick breath the two faced each other,
+aggressive and accusing.
+
+When the Senior Surgeon turned again to the President and the trustees
+his face wore a faint smile suggestive of amused toleration.
+
+"I hope the time will soon come," he said very distinctly, "when every
+training-school for nurses will bar out the so-called sentimental,
+imaginative type; they do a great deal of harm to the profession.  As I
+was saying, the incurable ward is doing nothing, and we need it for
+surgical cases.  Look over the reports for the last few months and you
+will see how many cases we have had to turn away--twenty in March,
+sixteen in February; and this month it is over thirty--one a day.  Now
+why waste that room for no purpose?"
+
+"Every one of those cases could get into, some of the other hospitals;
+but who would take the incurables?  What would you do with the children
+in Ward C, now?" and Margaret MacLean's voice rang out its challenge.
+
+The Senior Surgeon managed to check an angry explosive and turned to
+the President for succor.
+
+"I think," said that man of charitable parts, "that the meeting is
+getting a trifle too informal for order.  After the Senior Surgeon has
+finished I will call on those whom I feel have something
+of--hmm--importance to say.  In the mean time, my dear young lady, I
+beg of you not to interrupt again.  The children, of course, could all
+be returned to their homes."
+
+"Oh no, they couldn't--"  There was something hypnotic in the
+persistence of the nurse in charge of Ward C.
+
+Usually keenly sensitive, abnormally alive to impressions and
+atmosphere, she shrank from ever intruding herself or her opinions
+where they were not welcome; but now all personal consciousness was
+dead.  She was wholly unaware that she had worked the Senior Surgeon
+into a state where he had almost lost his self-control--a condition
+heretofore unknown in the Senior Surgeon; that she had exasperated the
+President and reduced the trustees to open-mouthed amazement.  The
+lorgnette shook unsteadily in the hand of the Oldest; and, unmindful of
+it all, Margaret MacLean went steadily on:
+
+"Most of them haven't any homes, and the others couldn't live in theirs
+a month.  You don't know how terrible they are--five families in one
+garret, nothing to eat some of the time, father drunk most of the time,
+and filth and foul air all of the time.  That's the kind of homes they
+have--if they have any."
+
+Her outburst was met with a complete silence, ignoring and humiliating.
+After a moment the Senior Surgeon went on, as if no one had spoken.
+
+"Am I not right in supposing that you wish to further, as far as it
+lies within your power, the physical welfare and betterment of the poor
+in this city?  That you wish to do the greatest possible good to the
+greatest number of children?  Ah!  I thought so.  Well, do you not see
+how continuing to keep a number of incurable cases for two or three
+years--or as long as they live--is hindering this?  You are keeping out
+so many more curable cases.  For every case in that ward now we could
+handle ten or fifteen surgical cases each year.  Is that not worth
+considering?"
+
+The trustees nodded approval to one another; it was as if they would
+say, "The Senior Surgeon is always right."
+
+The surgeon himself looked at his watch; he had three minutes left to
+clinch their convictions.  Clearly and admirably he outlined his
+present scope of work; then, stepping into the future, he showed into
+what it might easily grow, had it the room and beds.  He showed
+indisputably what experimental surgery had done for science--what a
+fertile field it was; and wherein lay Saint Margaret's chance to plow a
+furrow more and reap its harvest.  At the end he intimated that he had
+outgrown his present limited conditions there, that unless these were
+changed he should have to betake himself and his operative skill
+elsewhere.
+
+A painfully embarrassing hush closed in on the meeting as the Senior
+Surgeon resumed his seat.  It was broken by an enthusiastic chirp from
+the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee.  She had never attempted to keep
+her interest for him concealed in the bud, causing much perturbation to
+the House Surgeon, and leading the Disagreeable Trustee to remark,
+frequently:
+
+"Good Lord!  She'll throw herself at his head until he loses
+consciousness, and then she'll marry him."
+
+"I think," said she, beaming in the direction of the Senior Surgeon,
+"that it would be perfectly wonderful to be the means of discovering
+some great new thing in surgery.  And as our own great surgeon has just
+said, it is really ridiculous to let a few perfectly incurable cases
+stand in the way of science."
+
+The House Surgeon looked from the beaming profile to the tense, drawn
+outline of mouth and chin belonging to the nurse in charge of Ward C,
+and he found himself wondering if art had ever pictured a crucified
+Madonna, and, if so, why it had not taken Margaret MacLean as a model.
+That moment the President called his name.
+
+[Illustration: The House Surgeon looked from the beaming profile to the
+tense, drawn outline of mouth and chin belonging to the nurse in charge
+of Ward C.]
+
+The House Surgeon was still young and unspoiled enough to blush
+whenever he was consulted.  Moreover, he hated to speak in public,
+knowing, as he did, that he lacked the cultured manner and the polished
+speech of the Senior Surgeon.  He always crawled out of it whenever he
+could, putting some one else more ready of tongue in his place.  He was
+preparing to crawl this time when another look at the white profile in
+front of him brought him to his feet.
+
+"See here," he burst out, bluntly, "we all know the chief is as clever
+as any surgeon in the country, and that he can do anything in the world
+he sets out to do, even to turning Saint Margaret's into a surgical
+laboratory.  But you ought to stop him--you've got to stop him--that is
+your business as trustees of this institution.  We don't need any more
+surgical laboratories just yet--they are getting along fast enough at
+Rockefeller, Johns Hopkins, and the Mayo clinic.  What we scientific
+chaps need to remember--and it ought to be hammered at us three times a
+day, and then some--is that humanity was never put into the world for
+the sole purpose of benefiting science.  We are apt to forget this and
+get to thinking that a few human beings more or less don't count in the
+face of establishing one scientific fact."
+
+He paused just long enough to snatch a breath, and then went racing
+madly on.  "Institutions are apt to forget that they are taking care of
+the souls and minds of human beings as well as their bodies.  It seems
+to me that the man who founded this hospital intended it for humane
+rather than scientific purposes.  His wishes ought to be considered
+now; and I wager he would say, if he were here, to let science go hang
+and keep the incurables."
+
+The House Surgeon sat down, breathing heavily and mopping his forehead.
+It was the longest speech he had ever made, and he was painfully
+conscious of its inadequacy.  The Senior Surgeon excused himself and
+left the room, not, however, until he had given the House Surgeon a
+look pregnant with meaning; Saint Margaret's would hardly be large
+enough to hold them both after the 30th of April.
+
+The trustees moved restlessly in their chairs.  The unexpected had
+happened; there was an internal rupture at Saint Margaret's; and for
+forty years the trustees had boasted of its harmonious behavior and
+kindly feelings.  In a like manner do those dwellers in the shadow of a
+volcano continue to boast of their safety and the harmlessness of the
+crater up to the very hour of its eruption.  And all the while the gray
+wisp of a woman by the door sat silent, her hands still folded on her
+lap.
+
+At last the President rose; he coughed twice before speaking.  "I think
+we will call upon the hospital committee now for their reports.
+Afterward we will take up the question of the incurable ward among the
+trustees--hmm--alone."
+
+Every one sat quietly, almost listlessly, during the reading until
+Margaret MacLean rose, the report for Ward C in her hand.  Then there
+came a raising of heads and a stiffening of backs and a setting of
+chins.  She was very calm, the still calm of the China Sea before a
+typhoon strikes it; when she had finished reading she put the report on
+the chair back of her and faced the President with clasped hands and--a
+smile.
+
+"It's funny," she said, irrelevantly, "for the first time in my life I
+am not afraid here."
+
+And the House Surgeon muttered, under his breath: "Great guns!  That
+mind-string has snapped."
+
+"There is more to the report than I had the courage to write down when
+I was making it out; but I can give it very easily now, if you will not
+mind listening a little longer.  You have always thought that I came
+back to Saint Margaret's because I felt grateful for what you had done
+for me--for the food and the clothes and the care, and later for the
+education that you paid for.  This isn't true.  I am grateful--very
+grateful--but it is a dutiful kind of gratitude which wouldn't have
+brought me back in a thousand years.  I am so sorry to feel this way.
+Perhaps I would not if, in all the years that I was here as a child,
+one of you had shown me a single personal kindness, or some one had
+thought to send me a letter or a message while I was away at school.
+No, you took care of me because you thought it was your duty, and I am
+grateful for the same reason; but it was quite another thing which
+brought me back to Saint Margaret's."
+
+The smile had gone; she was very sober now.  And the House Surgeon,
+still watching the two profiles, suddenly felt his heart settle down to
+a single steady beat.  He wanted to get up that very instant and tell
+the nurse in charge of Ward C what had happened and what he thought of
+her; but instead he dug his hands deep in his pockets.  How in the name
+of the seven continents had he never before realized that she was the
+sweetest, finest, most adorable, and onliest girl in the world, and
+worth a whole board-room full of youngest and prettiest trustees?
+
+"I came back," went on Margaret MacLean, slowly, "really because of the
+Old Senior Surgeon, to stand, as he stood in the days long ago, between
+you and the incurable ward; to shut out--if I could--the little,
+thoughtless, hurting things that you are always saying without being in
+the least bit conscious of them, and to keep the children from wanting
+too much the friendship and loving interest that, somehow, they
+expected from you.  I wanted to try and make them feel that they were
+not case this and case that, abnormally diseased and therefore objects
+of pity and curiosity to be pointed out to sympathetic visitors, but
+children--just children--with a right to be happy and loved.  I wanted
+to fill their minds so full of fun and make-believe that they would
+have to forget about their poor little bodies.  I tried to make you
+feel this and help without putting it--cruelly--into words; but you
+would never understand.  You have never let them forget for a moment
+that they are 'incurables,' any more than you have let me forget that I
+am a--foundling."
+
+She stopped a moment for breath, and the smile came back--a wistfully
+pleading smile.  "I am afraid that last was not in the report.  What I
+want to say is--please keep the incurable ward; take the time to really
+know them--and love them a little.  If you only could you would never
+consider sending them away for a moment.  And if, in addition to the
+splendid care you have given their bodies, you would only help to keep
+their minds and hearts sound and sweet, and shield them against curious
+visitors, why--why--some of them might turn out to be 'a case in a
+thousand.'  Don't you see--can't you see--that they have as much right
+to their scraps of life and happiness--as your children have to their
+complete lives, and that there is no place for them anywhere if Saint
+Margaret's closes her doors?"
+
+With an overwhelming suddenness she became conscious of the attitude of
+the trustees.  She, who was nothing but a foundling and a charity
+patient herself, had dared to pass judgment on them; it was
+inconceivable--it was impertinent--it was beyond all precedent.  Only
+the gray wisp of a woman sat silent, seeming to express nothing.
+Margaret MacLean's cheeks flamed; she shrank into herself, her whole
+being acutely alive to their thoughts.  The scared little-girl look
+came into her face.
+
+"Perhaps--perhaps," she stammered, pitifully, "after what I have said
+you would rather I did not stay on--in charge of Ward C?"
+
+The Dominating Trustee rose abruptly.  "Mr. President, I suggest that
+we act upon Miss MacLean's resignation at once."
+
+"I second the motion," came in a quick bark from the Meanest Trustee,
+while the Oldest Trustee could be heard quoting, "Sharper than a
+serpent's tooth--"
+
+The Executive Trustee rose, looking past Margaret MacLean as he spoke.
+"In view of the fact that we shall possibly discontinue the incurable
+ward, and that Miss MacLean seems wholly unsatisfied with our methods
+and supervision here, I motion that her resignation be accepted now,
+and that she shall be free to leave Saint Margaret's when her month
+shall have expired,"
+
+"I second the motion," came from the Social Trustee, while she added to
+the Calculating, who happened to be sitting next: "So ill-bred.  It
+just shows that a person can never be educated above her station in
+life."
+
+The President rose.  "The motion has been made and seconded.  Will you
+please signify by raising your hands if it is your wish that Miss
+MacLean's resignation be accepted at once?"
+
+Hand after hand went up.  Only the little gray wisp of a woman in the
+chair by the door sat with her hands still folded on her lap.
+
+"It is, so to speak, a unanimous vote."  There was a strong hint of
+approval in the President's voice.  He was a good man; but he belonged
+to that sect which holds as one of the main articles of its faith, "I
+believe in the infallibility of the rich."
+
+"Can any one tell me when Miss MacLean's time expires?"
+
+The person under discussion answered for herself.  "On the last day of
+the month, Mr. President."
+
+"Oh, very well."  He was extremely polite in his manner.  "We thank you
+for your very full and--hmm--comprehensive report.  After to-night you
+are excused from your duties at Saint Margaret's."
+
+The President bowed her courteously out of the board-room, while the
+primroses in the green Devonshire bowl on his desk still nodded
+guilelessly.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+ODDS AND ENDS
+
+Margaret MacLean walked the length of the first corridor; once out of
+sight and hearing, she tore up the stairs, her cheeks crimson and her
+eyes suspiciously moist.  Before she had reached the second flight the
+House Surgeon overtook her.
+
+"I wish," he panted behind her, trying his best to look the big-brother
+way of old--"I wish you'd wait a moment.  This habit of yours of always
+walking up is a beastly one."
+
+"Don't worry about it."  There was a sharp, metallic ring in her voice
+that made it unnatural.  "That's one habit that will soon be broken."
+
+The House Surgeon smiled rather helplessly; inside he was making one of
+the few prayers of his life--a prayer to keep Margaret MacLean free of
+bitterness.  "There is something I want to say to you," he began.
+
+She broke in feverishly: "No, there isn't!  And I don't want to hear
+it.  I don't want to hear you're sorry.  I don't want to hear they'll
+be taken care of--somewhere--somehow.  I think I should scream if you
+told me it was bound to happen--or will all turn out for the best."
+
+"I had no intention of saying any of those things--in fact, they hadn't
+even entered my mind.  What I was going to--"
+
+"Oh, I know.  You were going to remind me of what you said this
+morning.  Almost prophetic, wasn't it?"  And there was a strong touch
+of irony in her laugh.  She turned on him crushingly.  "Perhaps you
+knew it all along.  Perhaps it was your way of letting me down gently."
+
+"See here," said the House Surgeon, bluntly, "that's the second
+disagreeable thing you've said to-day.  I don't think it's quite
+square.  Do you?"
+
+"No!"  Her lips quivered; her hands reached out toward his impulsively.
+"I don't know why I keep saying things I know are not true.  I'm
+perfectly--unforgivably horrid."
+
+As impulsively he took both hands, turned them palm uppermost, and
+kissed them.
+
+[Illustration: Impulsively he took both hands, turned them palm
+uppermost, and kissed them.]
+
+She snatched them away; the crimson in her cheeks deepened.  "Don't,
+please.  Your pity only makes it harder.  Oh, I don't know what has
+happened--here--"  And she struck her breast fiercely.  "If--if they
+send the children away I shall never believe in anything again; the
+part of me that has believed and trusted and been glad will stop--it
+will break all to pieces."  With a hard, dry sob she left him, running
+up the remaining stairs to Ward C.  She did not see his arms reach
+hungrily after her or the great longing in his face.
+
+The House Surgeon turned and went downstairs again.
+
+In the lower corridor he ran across the President, who was looking for
+him.  With much courtesy and circumlocution he was told the thing he
+had been waiting to hear: the board, likewise, had discovered that
+Saint Margaret's had suddenly grown too small to hold both the Senior
+Surgeon and himself.  Strangely enough, this troubled him little; there
+are times in a man's life when even the most momentous of happenings
+shrink into nothing beside the simple process of telling the girl he
+loves that he loves her.
+
+The President was somewhat startled by the House Surgeon's commonplace
+acceptance of the board's decision; and he returned to the board-room
+distinctly puzzled.
+
+Meanwhile Margaret MacLean, having waited outside of Ward C for her
+cheeks to cool and her eyes to dry, opened the door and went in.
+
+Ward C had been fed by the assistant nurse and put to bed; that is, all
+who could limp or wheel themselves about the room were back in their
+cribs, and the others were no longer braced or bolstered up.  As she
+had expected, gloom canopied every crib and cot; beneath, eight small
+figures, covered to their noses, shook with held-back sobs or wailed
+softly.  According to the custom that had unwittingly established
+itself, Ward C was crying itself to sleep.  Not that it knew what it
+was crying about, it being merely a matter of atmosphere and unstrung
+nerves; but that is cause enough to turn the mind of a sick child all
+awry, twisting out happiness and twisting in peevish, fretful feelings.
+
+She stood by the door, unnoticed, looking down the ward.  Pancho lay
+wound up in his blanket like a giant chrysalis, rolling in silent
+misery.  Sandy was stretched as straight and stiff as if he had been
+"laid out"; his eyes were closed, and there was a stolid,
+expressionless set to his features.  Margaret MacLean knew that it
+betokened much internal disturbance.  Susan, ex-philosopher, was
+sobbing aloud, pulling with rebellious fingers at the pieces of iron
+that kept her head where nature had planned it.  The Apostles gripped
+hands and moaned in unison, while Peter hugged his blanket, seeking
+thereby some consolation for the dispelled Toby.  Toby persistently
+refused to be conjured up on Trustee Days.
+
+Only Bridget was alert and watchful.  One hand was slipped through the
+bars of Rosita's crib, administering comforting pats to the rhythmic
+croon of an Irish reel.  Every once in a while her eyes would wander to
+the neighboring cots with the disquiet of an over-troubled mother; the
+only moments of real unhappiness or worry Bridget ever knew were those
+which brought sorrow to the ward past her power of mending.
+
+To Margaret MacLean, standing there, it seemed unbearable--as if life
+had suddenly become too sinister and cruel to strike at souls so little
+and helpless as these.  There were things one could never explain in
+terms of God.  She found herself wondering if that was why the Senior
+Surgeon worshiped science; and she shivered.
+
+The room had become repellent; it was a sepulchral place entombing all
+she had lost.  In the midst of the dusk and gloom her mind groped
+about--after its habit--for something cheerful, something that would
+break the colorless monotone of the room and change the atmosphere.  In
+a flash she remembered the primroses; and the remembrance brought a
+smile.
+
+"They're nothing but charlatans," she thought, "but the children will
+never find that out, and they'll be something bright for them to wake
+up to in the morning."
+
+This was what sent her down the stairs again, just as the board meeting
+adjourned.
+
+Now the board adjourned with thumbs down--signifying that the incurable
+ward was no more, as far as the future of Saint Margaret's was
+concerned.  The trustees stirred in their chairs with a comfortable
+relaxing of joint and muscle, as if to say, "There, that is a piece of
+business well despatched; nothing like methods of conservation and
+efficiency, you know."  Only the little gray wisp of a woman by the
+door sat rigid, her hands still folded on her lap.
+
+The Oldest Trustee had just remarked to the Social Trustee that all the
+things gossip had said of the widow of the Richest Trustee were
+undoubtedly true--she was a nonentity--when the Senior Surgeon dropped
+in.  This was according to the President's previous request.  That
+gentleman of charitable parts had implied that there would undoubtedly
+be good news and congratulations awaiting him.  This did not mean that
+the board intended to slight its duty and fail to consider the matter
+of the incurables with due conscientiousness--the board was as strong
+for conscience as for conservation.  It merely went to show that the
+fate of Ward C had been preordained from the beginning; and that the
+President felt wholly justified in requesting the presence of the
+Senior Surgeon at the end of the meeting.
+
+His appearance called forth such a laudatory buzzing of tongues and
+such a cordial shaking of hands that one might have easily mistaken the
+meeting for a successful political rally or a religious revival.  The
+Youngest and Prettiest Trustee fluttered about him, chirping ecstatic
+expletives, while the Disagreeable Trustee watched her and growled to
+himself.
+
+"So splendid," she chirped, "the unanimous indorsement of the board--at
+least, practically unanimous."  And she eyed the widow of the Richest
+Trustee accusingly.
+
+"The incurable ward and Margaret MacLean have really been a terrible
+responsibility, haven't they?  I can't help feeling it will mean quite
+a load off our minds."  It was the Social Trustee who spoke, and she
+followed it with a little sigh of relief.
+
+The sigh was echoed twice--thrice--about the room.  Then the Meanest
+Trustee barked out:
+
+"I hope it will mean a load off our purses.  That ward and that nurse
+have always wanted things, and had them, that they had no business
+wanting.  I hope we can save a substantial sum now for the endowment
+fund."
+
+The Oldest Trustee smiled tolerantly.  "Of course it isn't as if the
+cases were not hopeless.  I can see no object, however, in making
+concessions and sacrifices to keep in the hospital cases that cannot be
+cured; and, no doubt, we can place them most satisfactorily in state
+institutions for orphans or deficients."
+
+At that moment the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee spied the primroses
+on the President's desk--she had been too engrossed in the surgical
+profession to observe much apart.  "I believe I'm going to decorate
+you."  And she dimpled up at the Senior Surgeon, coquettishly.
+Selecting one of the blossoms with great care, she drew it through the
+buttonhole in his lapel.  "See, I'm decorating you with the Order of
+the Golden Primrose--for brilliancy."  Whereupon she dropped her eyes
+becomingly.
+
+"Good Lord!" muttered the Disagreeable Trustee to the President, his
+eye focused on the two.  "She'll fetch him this time.  And she'll have
+him so hypnotized with all this chirping and dancing business that
+he'll be perfectly helpless in a month, or I miss--"
+
+The Youngest and Prettiest Trustee looked up just in time to intercept
+that eye, and she attacked it with a saucy little stare.  "I believe
+you are both jealous," she flung over her shoulder.  But the very next
+moment she was dimpling again.  "I believe I am going to decorate
+everybody--including myself.  I'm sure we all deserve it for our loyal
+support of Science."  She, likewise, always spelled it with a capital,
+having acquired the habit from the Senior Surgeon.
+
+She snatched a cluster of primroses from the green Devonshire bowl; and
+one was fastened securely in the lapel or frill of every trustee, not
+even omitting the gray wisp of a woman by the door.
+
+And so it came to pass that every member of the board of Saint
+Margaret's Free Hospital for Children went home on May Eve with one of
+the faeries' own flowers tucked somewhere about his or her person.
+Moreover, they went home at precisely three minutes and twenty-two
+seconds past seven by the clock on the tower--the astronomical time for
+the sun to go down on the 30th of April.  Crack went all the
+combination locks on all the faery raths, spilling the Little People
+over all the world; and creak went the gates of Tir-na-n'Og, swinging
+wide open for wandering mortals to come back.
+
+As the trustees left the hospital the Senior Surgeon turned into the
+cross-corridor for his case, still gay with his Order of the Golden
+Primrose; and there, at the foot of the stairs, he ran into Margaret
+MacLean.  They faced each other for the merest fraction of a breath,
+both conscious and embarrassed; then she glimpsed the flower in his
+coat and a cry of surprise escaped her.
+
+He smiled, almost foolishly.  "I thought they--it--looked rather pretty
+and--spring-like," he began, by way of explanation.  His teeth ground
+together angrily; he sounded absurd, and he knew it.  Furthermore, it
+was inexcusable of her to corner him in this fashion.
+
+Now Margaret MacLean knew well enough that he would never have
+discovered the prettiness of anything by himself--not in a century of
+springtimes, and she sensed the truth.
+
+"Did she decorate you?" she inquired, with an irritating little curl of
+her lips.  The Senior Surgeon's self-confessed blush lent speed to her
+tongue.  "I think I might be privileged to ask what it was for.  You
+see, I presented the flowers to the board meeting.  Was it for
+self-sacrifice?"  Her eyes challenged his.
+
+"You are capable of talking more nonsense and being more impertinent
+than any nurse I have ever known.  May I pass?"  His eyes returned her
+challenge, blazing.
+
+But she never moved; the mind-string once broken, there seemed to be no
+limit to the thoughts that could come tumbling off the end of her
+tongue.  Her eyes went back to the flower in his coat.
+
+"Perhaps you would like to know that I bought those this morning
+because they seemed the very breath of spring itself--a bit of promise
+and gladness.  I thought they would keep the day going right."
+
+"Well, they have--for me."  And the Senior Surgeon could not resist a
+look of triumph.
+
+"The trustees"--she drew in a quick breath and put out a steadying hand
+on the banisters--"you mean--they have given up the incurable ward?"
+
+He nodded.  His voice took on a more genial tone.  He felt he could
+generously afford to be pleasant and patient toward the one who had not
+succeeded.  "It was something that was bound to happen sooner or later.
+Can't you see that yourself?  But I am sorry, very sorry for you."
+
+Suddenly, and for the first time in their long sojourn together in
+Saint Margaret's, he became wholly conscious of the girl before him.
+He realized that Margaret MacLean had grown into a vital and vitalizing
+personality--a force with which those who came in contact would have to
+reckon.  She stood before him now, frozen into a gray, accusing figure.
+
+"Are you ill?" he found himself asking.
+
+"No."
+
+He shifted his weight uneasily to the other foot.  "Is there anything
+you want?"
+
+Her face softened into the little-girl look.  Her eyes brimmed with a
+sadness past remedy.  "What a funny question from you--you, who have
+taken from me the only thing I ever let myself want--the love and
+dependence of those children.  Success, and having whatever you want,
+are such common things with you, that you must count them very cheap;
+but you can't judge what they mean to others--or what they may cost
+them."
+
+"As I said before, I am sorry, very sorry you have lost your position
+here; but you have no one but yourself to blame for that.  I should
+have been very glad to have you remain in the new surgical ward; you
+are one of the best operative nurses I ever had."  He added this in all
+justice to her; and to mitigate, if he could, his own feeling of
+discomfort.
+
+Margaret MacLean smiled grimly.  "Thank you.  I was not referring to
+the loss of my position, however; that matters very little."
+
+"It should matter."  The voice of the Senior Surgeon became instantly
+professional.  "Every nurse should put her work, satisfactorily and
+scientifically executed, before everything else.  That is where you are
+radically weak.  Let me remind you that it is your sole business to
+look after the physical betterment of your patients--nothing else; and
+the sooner you give up all this sentimental, fanciful nonsense the
+sooner you will succeed."
+
+"You are wrong.  I should never succeed that way--never.  Some cases
+may need only the bodily care--maybe; but you are a very poor doctor,
+after all, if you think that is all that children need--or half the
+grown-ups.  There are more people ailing with mind-sickness and
+heart-sickness, as well as body-sickness, than the world would guess,
+and you've just got to nurse the whole of them.  You will succeed,
+whether you ever find this out or not; but you will miss a great deal
+out of your life."
+
+Anger was rekindling in the eyes of the Senior Surgeon; and Margaret
+MacLean, seeing, grew gentle--all in a minute.
+
+"Oh, I wish I could make you understand.  You have always been so
+strong and well and sufficient unto yourself, it's hard, I suppose, to
+be able to think or see life through the iron slats of a hospital crib.
+Just make believe you had been a little crippled boy, with nothing
+belonging to you, nothing back of you to remember, nothing happy coming
+to you but what the nurses or the doctors or the trustees thought to
+bring.  And then make believe you were cured and grew up.  Wouldn't you
+remember what life had been in that hospital crib, and wouldn't you
+fight to make it happier for the children coming after you?  Why, the
+incurable ward was my whole life--home, family, friends, work;
+everything wrapped up in nine little crippled bodies.  It was all I
+asked or expected of life.  Oh, I can tell you that a foundling, with
+questionable ancestry, with no birth-record or blood-inheritance to
+boast of, claims very little of the every-day happiness that comes to
+other people.  And yet I was so glad to be alive--and strong and needed
+by those children that I could have been content all my life with just
+that."
+
+The Senior Surgeon cleared his throat, preparatory to making some
+comment, but the nurse raised a silencing finger.
+
+"Wait! there is one thing more.  What you have taken from me is the
+smallest part.  The children pay double--treble as much.  I pay only
+with my heart and faith; they pay with their whole lives.  Remember
+that when you install your new surgical ward--and don't reckon it too
+cheap."
+
+She left him still clearing his throat; and when she came out of the
+board-room a few seconds later with the green Devonshire bowl in her
+arms he had disappeared.
+
+Margaret MacLean found Ward C as she had left it.  As she was putting
+down the primroses, on the table in the center of the room she caught
+Bridget's white face beckoning to her eagerly.  Softly she went over to
+her cot.
+
+"What is it, dear?"
+
+"Miss Peggie darlin', if ye'd only give me leave to talk quiet I'd have
+the childher cheered up in no time."
+
+"Would you promise not to make any noise?"
+
+"Promise on m' heart!  I'll have 'em all asleep quicker 'n nothin'.  Ye
+see, just."
+
+"Very well.  I'll be back after supper to see if the promise has been
+kept."  She stooped, brushed away the curls, and kissed the little
+white forehead.  "Oh, Bridget!  Bridget! no matter what happens, always
+remember to keep happy!"
+
+"Sure an' I will," agreed Bridget; and she watched the nurse go out,
+much puzzled.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE PRIMROSE RING
+
+Bridget, oldest of the ward, general caretaker and best beloved,
+hunched herself up on her pillows until she was sitting reasonably
+straight, and clapped her hands.  "Whist!" she called, softly.  "Whist
+there, all o' ye!  What's ailin'?"
+
+Eight woebegone pairs of eyes turned in her direction.
+
+"Ye needn't be afeared o' speakin'.  Miss Peggie give us leave to talk
+quiet."
+
+"It's them trusters," wailed Peter.  "They come a-peekin' round to see
+we don't get well."
+
+"They alters calls us 'uncurables,'" moaned Susan.
+
+"Pig of water-drinking Americans!" came from the last cot.
+
+"Ye shut up, Michael!  Who did ye ever hear say that?"
+
+"Mine fader."  And Michael spat in a perfect imitation thereof.
+
+"Well, don't ye ever say it ag'in--do ye hear?  Miss Peggie's American,
+and so's the House Surgeon, an' it's the next best thing to bein'
+Irish--which every one can't be, the Lord knows.  Now them trusters is
+heathen, an' they don't know nothin' more'n heathen, an' we ought to be
+easy on 'em for bein' so ignorant."
+
+"They ken us 'll nae mair be gettin' weel," said Sandy, mournfully.
+
+"Aw, ye're talkin' foolish entirely.  What do ye think that C on the
+door means?"
+
+A silence, significant of much brain-racking, followed.
+
+"C stands for children," announced Susan, triumphantly.
+
+"Aye, it does that, but there be's somethin' more."
+
+"Crutches," suggested Pancho, tentatively.
+
+"Aw, go on wid ye," laughed Bridget.  "Ye're 'way off."  She paused a
+moment impressively.  "C means 'cured.'  '_Childher Cured_,' that's
+what!  Now all we've got to do is to forget trusters an' humps an'
+pains an' them disagreeable things, an' think o' somethin' pleasant."
+
+"Ain't nothin' pleasant ter think of in er horspital," wailed John, the
+present disheartenment clouding over all past happiness.
+
+"Ain't, neither," agreed James.
+
+"Aye, there be," contradicted Sandy.  "Dinna ye ken the wee gray woman
+'at cam creepity round an' smiled?"
+
+"She was nice," said Susan, with obvious approval.  "Do ye think, now,
+she might ha' been me aunt?"
+
+A chorus of positive negation settled all further speculation, while
+Bridget bluntly inquired.  "Honest to goodness, Susan, do ye think the
+likes o' ye could belong to the likes o' that?"
+
+Pancho broke the painful silence by reverting to the original topic in
+hand.  "Mi' Peggie pleasant too," he suggested, smiling adorably.
+
+"But we've not got either of 'em no longer, so they're no good now,"
+Peter unfortunately reminded every one.
+
+"Don't ye know there be's always somethin' pleasant to think about if
+ye just hunt round a bit, an' things an' feelin's never get that bad ye
+can't squeeze out some pleasantment.  Don't ye mind the time the
+trusters had planned to give us all paint-boxes for Christmas, an' half
+of us not able to hold a brush, let alone paint things, an' Miss Peggie
+blarneyed them round into givin' us books?  Don't ye mind?  Now we've
+got somethin' pleasant here, right now--"  And Bridget smiled.
+
+"What?"
+
+"May Eve."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"'Tain't nothin'," said Susan, sliding back disappointedly on her
+pillow.
+
+"Sure an' it is," said Bridget; "it's somethin' grand."
+
+"'Tain't nothin'," persisted Susan, "but a May party in Cen'ral Park.
+Every one takes somethin' ter eat in a box, an' the boys play ball an'
+the girls dance round, an' the cops let you run on the grass.  I knows
+all about it, fer my sister Katie was 'queen' onct."
+
+"We couldn't play ball, ner run on the grass, ner anything," said
+Peter, regretfully.
+
+"'Tisn't what Susan says at all," said Bridget, by way of consolation.
+"If ye'll harken to me a minute, just, I'll be afther tellin' ye what
+it is."
+
+Ward C became instantly silent--hopefully expectant; Bridget had led
+them into pleasant places too often for them not to believe in her
+implicitly and do what she said.
+
+"May Eve," began Bridget, slowly, "is the night o' the year when the
+faeries come throopin' out o' the ground to fly about on twigs o' thorn
+an' dance to the music o' the faery pipers.  They're all dthressed in
+wee green jackets an' caps, an' 'tis grand luck to any that sees them.
+And all the wishes good childher make on May Eve are sure to come
+thrue."  She stopped a moment.  "Let's make believe; let's make
+believe--"  Her eyes fell on the primroses, and for the first time she
+recognized them.  "Holy Saint Bridget! them's faery primroses!"
+
+Ward C was properly impressed.  Eight little figures sat up as straight
+as they could; eight pairs of eager eyes followed Bridget's pointing
+finger and gazed in speechless wonder at the green Devonshire bowl.
+
+"Do ye think, Sandy, that ye could scrooch out o' bed an' hump yerself
+over to them?  If Pether tries he's sure to tumble over, an' some one
+might hear."
+
+Sandy looked at the flowers without enthusiasm.  "Phat are ye wantin'
+wi' 'em?"
+
+"I'll tell ye when ye get there.  Just thry; ye'll be yondther afore ye
+know it."
+
+Cautiously Sandy rolled over on his stomach and pushed two shrunken
+little legs out from the covers.  Putting them gingerly to the floor,
+he stood up, holding fast to the bed; then working his way from bed to
+bed, he reached the table at last, spurred on by Bridget's irresistible
+blarney:
+
+"Sure ye're walkin' grand, Sandy.  I never saw any one puttin' one leg
+past another smarther than what ye are.  Ye'd fetch up to Aberdeen i'
+no time if ye kept on at the pace ye are goin'."
+
+Pride lies above pain; and Sandy held his head very high as he steadied
+himself by the table and looked toward Bridget for further orders.
+
+[Illustration: Sandy held his head very high as he steadied himself by
+the table and looked toward Bridget for further orders.]
+
+"Phat wull a do the noo?" he asked.
+
+In the excitement Bridget had pulled herself to the foot of the cot;
+and there, eyes shining and cheeks growing pinker and pinker, she held
+her breath while the pleasantest thought of all shaped itself somewhere
+under the shock of red curls.
+
+"Ye could never guess in a hundthred years what I was thinkin' this
+minute," she burst forth, ecstatically.
+
+Eight mouths opened wide in anticipated wonder; but no one thought of
+guessing.
+
+"I'm thinkin'--I'm thinkin' we could make a primrose ring the night.
+Is there any knowledgeable one among ye that knows aught of a primrose
+ring?"
+
+Eight heads shook an emphatic negative.
+
+"Aye, wasn't I sayin' so!  Well, sure, a primrose ring is a faery ring;
+an' any one that makes it an' steps inside, wishin' a wish, is like to
+have anythin' at all happen them afore they steps out of it ag'in."
+
+Eight breaths were drawn in and sighed out with the shivering delight
+that always accompanies that feeling which lies between fear and
+desire; likewise, eight delicious thrills zigzagged up eight cold
+little spines.  Then Bridget shook a commanding finger at Sandy.
+
+"Ye take them flowers out o' the pot an' dthrop them, one by one, till
+ye have the ground covered from the head of Pancho's bed to the tail o'
+Michael's.  'Twon't make the whole of a ring, but if ye crook it out i'
+the middle to the wall yondther, 'twill be like enough."
+
+With a doubtful eye Sandy spanned the distance.  "Na--na.  Gien a
+hustled a wud be a dee'd loonie afore a had 'em spilled."
+
+"Aw, go on!" chorused the watchers.
+
+"Thry, just," urged Bridget, "an' we'll sing 'Onward, Christian
+Soldier' to hearten ye up."
+
+Eight shrill voices piped out the tune; and Sandy, caught by its
+martial spirit, before he knew it was limping a circle about the beds,
+marking his trail with golden blossoms.  Luckily for Ward C, the nurse
+on duty during the dinner-hour was in the medical ward, with the door
+closed.  And when she came back to her listening post in the corridor
+the last word had been sung, the last flower dropped, and Sandy was in
+his cot again, stretching tired little legs under the covers.
+
+Perhaps the geometrician, or the accurate-minded reader, will doubt
+whether the primrose ring was made at all--seeing that the wall of Ward
+C cut off nearly thirty degrees of it.  But in the world of fancy
+geometrical accuracy does not hold; and the only important thing is
+believing that the ring has been made.  I have known of a few who could
+step inside the faery circle whenever they willed, and without a
+visible primrose about; but for most of us the blossoms are needed to
+make the enchantment.
+
+This is one of the heritages that come to those who are lucky enough to
+dwell much in the world of fancy.  They can wish for things and possess
+them, and enjoy them without actually grasping them with their two
+hands and saying, "These are my personal belongings."  Material things
+are rather a nuisance, on the whole, for they have to be dusted and
+kept in order, repatched or repainted; and if one wishes to carry them
+about there are always the bother of packing and the danger of losing.
+But these other possessions are different--they are with us wherever we
+go and whenever we want them--to-day, to-morrow, or for eternity.
+
+"If we had the wee red wishin'-cap," said Bridget, thoughtfully, "we'd
+not have to be waitin' for what's likely to happen.  We could just wish
+ourselves into Tir-na-n'Og."
+
+"What's that?" demanded Peter.
+
+"Tis the place the faeries live in, an' 'tis in Irelan'.  Sure, 'tis
+easy gettin' the cap," continued Bridget, with conviction.  "All ye
+need do is to say afther me, 'I wish--I wish for the wee red cap,' an'
+ye have it."
+
+Bridget extended her hands, palms upward, and the others followed her
+example; and together they whispered: "I wish--I wish for the wee red
+cap."
+
+Immediately Bridget's hands closed over a cubic inch of atmosphere, and
+she cried, exultantly, "Hold on to it tight an' slip it on your head
+quick--afore it gets from ye!"
+
+Only seven pairs of hands obeyed--Michael protested.
+
+"I have nothinks got," he said, disgustedly.
+
+"Shut up!"  And Bridget shook a menacing fist at him.  "He's foolish
+entirely.  He thinks he hasn't anythin' foreby he can't see it.  Now,
+all together, 'We wish--'"
+
+"Can we go 'thout any clothes?" interrupted Susan.  "We'd feel awful
+queer in nightshirts."
+
+"Don't ye worry, darlin'.  Like as not when we get there the queen
+herself 'll open a monsthrous big chest where they keeps all the faery
+clothes, an' let us choose anythin' at all we wants to wear."
+
+"Pants?" queried Peter, eagerly.
+
+"Sure, an' silk dresses an' straw hats wi' ribbon on them, an--"
+
+"Will shoes in the chest be?"  Pancho was very anxious; he had never
+had a pair of shoes in all his six years.
+
+Bridget beamed.  "Not i' the chest; but I'll be tellin' ye how ye'll
+come by them.  When we get there we'll look about for a
+blackthorn-bush--an' there--like as not--in undther it--will be a wee
+man wi' a leather apron across his knee--the leprechaun, big as life!"
+
+"What's him?"
+
+"Faith I'm tellin' ye--'tis the faery cobbler.  An' the minute he slaps
+the tail of his eye on us he'll sing out: 'Hello, Pancho an' Sandy an'
+Susan an' all o' yez.  I've your boots finished, just.'  An' wi' that
+he'll fetch down the nine pairs an' hand them round."
+
+A sigh of blissful contentment started from the cot by the door,
+burbled down the length of the ward, and vanished out of the window.
+Is there anything dearer to the pride of a child than boots--new boots?
+
+Bridget took up the dropped thread and went on.  "An' afther that the
+leprechaun reaches for his crock o' gold an' pulls out a penny.  Ye can
+buy anythin' i' the whole world wi' a faery penny."
+
+"Anythinks!" said Michael, skeptically.
+
+"That's what I said."
+
+"Could yer buy a dorg?" Peter asked, opening one renegade eye.
+
+"Sure--a million dogs."
+
+"Don't want a million.  Want jus' one real live black dorg--named
+Toby--wiv yeller spots an' half-legs--an' long ears--an' a stand-up
+tail--an' legs--an' long--long--long--"  The renegade eye closed tight
+and Peter was smiling at something afar off.
+
+An antiphonal chorus of yawns broke the hush that followed, while
+Bridget worked herself back under the covers.
+
+"A ken the penny micht be buyin' a hame," came in a drowsy voice from
+Sandy's crib.  "'Twad be a hame in Aberdeen--wi' trees an' flo'ers an'
+mickle wee creepit things--an'--Miss Peggie--an'--us--"
+
+"Sure, an' it could be buyin' a grand home in Irelan', the same,"
+Bridget beamed; and then she added, struck forcibly with an
+afterthought: "But what would be the sense of a home anywheres but
+here--furninst--within easy reach of a crutch or a wheeled chair?  Tell
+me that!"
+
+Sandy grunted ambiguously; and Bridget took up again the thread of her
+recounting.
+
+"Ye could never be guessin' half o' the sthrange adventures we'll be
+havin'!  Like as not Sandy 'll be gettin' his hump lifted off him.  I
+mind the story--me mother often told it me.  There was a humpy back in
+Irelan', once, who went always about wi' song in his heart an' another
+on his lips; an' one day he fetched up inside a faery rath.  The pipers
+were pipin' an' the Wee People was dancin', an' while they was dancin'
+they was singin' like this: 'Monday an' Tuesday--an' Monday an'
+Tuesday--an' Monday an' Tuesday'--an' it sounded all jerky and bad.
+'That's a terrible poor song,' says the humpy, speakin' out plain.
+'What's that?' says the faeries, stoppin' their dance an' gatherin'
+round him.  ''Tis mortal poor music ye are making' says the humpy
+ag'in.  'Can ye improve it any?' asked the faeries.  'I can that,' says
+the humpy.  'Add Wednesday to it an' ye'll have double as good a song.'
+An' when the faeries tried it it was so pretty, an' they was so
+pleased, they took the hump off him."
+
+Sandy had curled up like a kitten; his eyes were shut, and he was
+smiling, too.  Every one was very quiet; only Rosita moved, reaching
+out a frightened hand to Bridget.
+
+"Fwaid," she lisped.  "All dark--fwaid to do."
+
+"Whist, darlin', ye needn't be afeared.  Bridget 'll hold tight to your
+hand all the way.  An' the stars will be out there makin' it bright--so
+bright--foreby the stars are the faeries' old rush-lights.  When
+they're all burned out, just, they throw them up i' the sky--far as
+ever they can--an' God reaches out an' catches them.  Then He sets them
+all a-burnin' ag'in, so's the wee angel babies can see what road to be
+takin'.  An' Sandy 'll lose his hump--an' Michael 'll get a new
+heart--maybe--that won't bump--an' they'll put all the trusters in
+cages--all but the nice Wee One--cages like they have in the circus--
+An' they'll never get out to pesther us--never--never--no--more--"
+Bridget's voice trailed off into the distance, carrying with it the
+last of Rosita's fearing consciousness.
+
+Ward C had suddenly become empty--empty except for a row of tumbled
+beds and nine little tired-out, cast-off bodies.  They had been shed as
+easily as a boy slips out of his dusty, uncomfortable overalls on a
+late sultry afternoon, and leaves them behind him on a shady bank,
+while he plunges, head first, into the cool, dark waters of the
+swimming-pool just below him, which have been calling and calling and
+calling.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+AND BEYOND
+
+What happened beyond the primrose ring is, perhaps, rather a
+crazy-quilt affair, having to be patched out of the squares and
+three-cornered bits of Fancy which the children remembered to bring
+back with them.  I have tried to piece them together into a fairly
+substantial pattern; but, of course, it can be easily ripped out and
+raveled into nothing.  So I beg of you, on the children's account, to
+handle it gently, for they believe implicitly in the durability of the
+fabric.
+
+Sandy remembered the beginning of it--the plunge straight across the
+primrose ring into the River of Make-Believe; and how they paddled over
+like puppies--one after another.  It was perfectly safe to swim, even
+if you had never swum before; and the only danger was for those who
+might stop in the middle of the river and say, or think, "A dinna
+believe i' faeries."  Whoever should do this would sink like a stone,
+going down, down, down until he struck his bed with a thud and woke,
+crying.
+
+It was starlight in Tir-na-n'Og--just as Bridget had said it would
+be--only the stars were far bigger and brighter.  The children stood on
+the white, pebbly beach and shook themselves dry; while Bridget showed
+them how to pull down their nightshirts to keep them from shrinking,
+and how to wring out their faery caps to keep the wishes from growing
+musty or mildewed.  After that they met the faery ferryman,
+who--according to Sandy--"wore a wee kiltie o' reeds, an' a tammie made
+frae a loch-lily pad wi' a cat-o'-nine-tail tossel, lukin' sae ilk the
+brae ye wad niver ken he was a mon glen ye dinna see his legs,
+walkin'."  He told them how he ferried over all the "old bodies" who
+had grown feeble-hearted and were too afraid to swim.
+
+It was Pancho who remembered best about the leprechaun--how they found
+him sitting cross-legged under the blackthorn-bush with a leather apron
+spread over his knees, and how he had called out--just as Bridget had
+said he would:
+
+"Hello, Pancho and Susan and Sandy and all!"
+
+"Have you any shoes got?" Pancho shouted.
+
+The faery cobbler nodded and pointed with his awl to the branches above
+his head; there hung nine pairs of little green shoes, curled at the
+toes, with silver buckles, all stitched and soled and ready to wear.
+
+"Will they fit?" asked Pancho, breathlessly.
+
+"Faery shoes always fit.  Now reach them down and hand them round."
+
+This Pancho did with despatch.  Nine pairs of little white feet were
+thrust joyously into the green shoes and buckled in tight.  On looking
+back, Pancho was quite sure that this was the happiest moment of his
+life.  The children squealed and clapped their hands and cried:
+
+"They fit fine!"
+
+"Shoes is grand to wear!"
+
+"I feel skippy."
+
+"I feel dancy."
+
+Whereupon they all jumped to their feet and with arms wide-spread, hand
+clasping hand, they ringed about the cobbler and the thorn-bush.  They
+danced until there was not a scrap of breath left in their bodies; then
+they tumbled over and rolled about like a nest of young puppies, while
+the cobbler laughed and laughed until he held his sides with the aching.
+
+It was here that everybody remembered about the faery penny; in fact,
+that was the one thing remembered by all.  And this is hardly strange;
+if you or I ever possessed a faery penny--even in the confines of a
+primrose ring--we should never forget it.
+
+It was Bridget, however, who reminded the leprechaun.  "Ye haven't by
+any chance forgotten somethin' ye'd like to be rememberin', have ye?"
+she asked, diplomatically.
+
+"I don't know," and the cobbler pulled his thinking-lock.  "What might
+it be?"
+
+"Sure, it might be a faery penny," and Bridget eyed him anxiously.
+
+The cobbler slapped his apron and laughed again.  "To be sure it
+might--and I came near forgetting it."
+
+He reached, over and pulled up a tuft of sod at his side; for all one
+could have told, it might have been growing there, neighbor to all the
+other sods.  Underneath was a dark little hole in the ground; and out
+of this he brought a brown earthen crock.
+
+"The crock o' gold!" everybody whispered, awesomely.
+
+"Aye, the crock o' gold," agreed the cobbler.  "But I keep it hidden,
+for there is naught that can make more throuble--sometimes."  He raised
+the lid and took out a single shining piece.  "Will one do ye?"
+
+Nine heads nodded eloquently, while nine hands were stretched out
+eagerly to take it.
+
+"Bide a bit.  Ye can't all be carrying it at the one time.  I think ye
+had best choose a treasurer."
+
+Bridget was elected unanimously.  She took the penny and deposited it
+in the heel of her faery shoe.
+
+"Mind," said the leprechaun as they were turning to go, "ye mind a
+faery penny will buy but the one thing.  See to it that ye are all
+agreed on the same thing."
+
+The children chorused an assent and skipped merrily away.  And here is
+where Peter's patch joins Pancho's.
+
+They had not gone far over the silvery-green meadow--three
+shadow-lengths, perhaps--when they saw something coming toward them.
+It was coming as fast as half-legs could carry it; and it was wagging a
+_long_, stand-up tail.  Everybody guessed in an instant that it was
+Peter's "black dorg wiv yeller spots."
+
+"Who der thunk it?  Who der thunk it?" shouted Peter, jumping up and
+down; and then he knelt on the grass, his arms flung wide open, while
+he called: "Toby, Toby!  Here's me!"
+
+Of course Toby knew Peter--that goes without saying.  He barked and
+wagged his tail and licked Peter's face; in fact, he did every
+dog-thing Peter had longed for since Peter's mind had first fashioned
+him.
+
+"Well," and Bridget put both arms akimbo and smiled a smile of complete
+satisfaction, "what was I a-tellin' ye, anyways?  Faith, don't it beat
+all how things come thrue--when ye think 'em pleasant an' hard enough?"
+
+Peter remembered the wonderful way their feet skimmed over the
+ground--"'most like flyin'."  Not a blade of grass bent under their
+weight, not a grain of sand was dislodged; and--more marvelous than
+all--there was no tiredness, no aching of joint or muscle.  All of
+which was bound to happen when feet were shod with faery shoes.
+
+"See me walk!" cried some one.
+
+"See me run!" cried some one else.
+
+"See me hop and jump!"
+
+And Bridget added, "Faith, 'tis as easy as lyin' in bed."
+
+They were no longer alone; hosts of Little People passed them, going in
+the same direction.  Peter said most of them rode "straddle-legs" on
+night birds or moths, while some flew along on a funny thing that was
+horse before and weeds behind.  I judge this must have been the
+buchailin buidhe or benweed, which the faeries bewitch and ride the
+same as a witch mounts her broomstick.
+
+And everybody who passed always called out in the friendliest way,
+"Hello, Peter!" or "Hello, Bridget!" or "The luck rise with ye!" which
+is the most common of all greetings in Tir-na-n'Og.
+
+"Gee!" was Peter's habitual comment after the telling, "maybe it wasn't
+swell havin' 'em know us--names an' all.  Betcher life we wasn't cases
+to them--no, siree!"
+
+It was Susan who remembered best how everything looked--Susan, who had
+never been to the country in all her starved little life--that is, if
+one excepts the times Margaret MacLean had taken her on the Ward C
+"special."  She told so well how all the trees and flowers were
+fashioned that it was an easy matter putting names to them.
+
+In the center of Tir-na-n'Og towered a great hill; but instead of its
+being capped with peak or rocks it was gently hollowed at the top, as
+though in the beginning, when it was thrown up molten from the depths
+of somewhere, a giant thumb had pressed it down and smoothed it round
+and even.  All about the brim of it grew hawthorns and rowans and
+hazel-trees.  In the grass, everywhere, were thousands and millions of
+primroses, heart's-ease, and morning-glories; all crowded together, so
+Susan said, like the patterns on the Persian carpet in the board-room.
+It was all so beautiful and faeryish and heart-desired that "yer'd have
+said it wasn't real if yer hadn't ha' knowed it was."
+
+The children stood on the brink of the giant hollow and clapped their
+hands for the very joy of seeing it all; and there--a little man
+stepped up to them and doffed his cap.  The queen wanted them--she was
+waiting for them by the throne that very minute; and the little man was
+to bring them to her.
+
+Now that throne--according to Susan--was nothing like the thrones one
+finds in stories or Journeys through palaces to see.  It was not cold,
+hard, or forbidding; instead, it was as soft and green and pillowy as
+an inflated golf-bunker might be, and just high and comfortable enough
+for the baby faeries to discover it and go to sleep there whenever they
+felt tired.  The throne was full of them when the children looked, and
+some one was tumbling them off like so many kittens.
+
+"That is the queen," said the little man, pointing.
+
+The children stood on tiptoes and craned their necks the better to see;
+but it was not until they had come quite close that they saw that her
+dress was gray, and her hair was gray, and she was small, and her face
+was like--
+
+"Bless me if it ain't!" shouted Susan in amazement.  "It's Sandy's wee
+creepity woman!"
+
+The queen smiled when she saw them.  She reached out her hands and
+patted theirs in turn, asking, "Now what is your name, dearie?"
+
+"Are ye sure ye're the queen?" gasped Bridget.
+
+"Maybe I am--and maybe I'm not," was the answer.
+
+"Then ye been't the wee gray woman--back yonder?" asked Sandy.
+
+"Maybe I'm not--and maybe I am."  And then she laughed.  "Dear
+children, it doesn't matter in the least who I am.  I look a hundred
+different ways to a hundred different people.  Now let me see--I think
+you wanted some--clothes."
+
+A long, rapturous sigh was the only answer.  It lasted while the queen
+got down on her knees--just like an every-day, ordinary person--and
+pulled from under the throne a great carved chest.  She threw open the
+lid wide; and there, heaped to the top and spilling over, were dresses
+and mantles and coats and trousers and caps.  They were all lengths,
+sizes, and fashions--just what you most wanted after you had been in
+bed for years and never worn anything but a hospital shirt; and
+everything was made of cloth o' dreams and embroidered with pearls from
+the River of Make-Believe.
+
+"You can choose whatever you like, dearies," said the queen.  And
+that--according to Susan--was the best of all.
+
+Next came the dancing; the Apostles remembered about that
+co-operatively.  They had donned pants of pink and yellow,
+respectively, with shirts of royal purple and striked stockings, when
+the pipers began to play.  James said it sounded like soldiers
+marching; John was certain that it was more like a circus; but I am
+inclined to believe that they played "The Music of Glad Memories" and
+"What-is-Sure-to-Come-True," for those are the two popular airs in
+Tir-na-n'Og.
+
+Away and away must have danced pairs of little feet that had never
+danced before, and pairs of old feet that had long ago forgotten how;
+and millions of faery feet, for no one can dance half as joyously as
+when faeries dance with them.  And I have heard it said that the pipers
+there can play sadness into gladness, and tears into laughter, and old
+age young again; and that those who have ever danced to the music of
+faery pipes never really grow heavy-hearted again.
+
+Needless to say, the Apostles danced together, and Peter danced with
+Toby; and it must have been the maddest, merriest dance, for they never
+told about it afterward without bursting into peal after peal of
+laughter.  Truth to tell, the Apostles' patch of fancy ended right
+there--all raveling out into smiles and squirms of delight.
+
+Another memory of Sandy's adjoins that of the Apostles'; and he told it
+with great precision and regard for the truth.
+
+Ever since crossing the River of Make-Believe Sandy had been able to
+think of nothing but the story Bridget had told--the very last thing in
+Ward C--and ever since he had left the leprechaun's bush behind he had
+been wondering and scheming how he could get rid of his hump.  He was
+the only person in Tir-na-n'Og that night who did not dance.
+Unnoticed, he climbed into a corner of the throne--among the sleeping
+baby faeries--and there he thought hard.  As he listened to the pipers'
+music he shook his head mournfully.
+
+"A canna make music mair bonny nor that--a canna," he said; and he set
+about searching through the scraps of his memory for what music he did
+know.  There were the hymns they sang every Sunday at Saint Margaret's;
+but he somewhat doubted their appropriateness here.  Then there were
+the songs his mother had sung to him home in Aberdeen.  Long ago the
+words had been forgotten; but often and often he had hummed the music
+of them over to himself when he was going to sleep--it was good music
+for that.  One of the airs popped into his mind that very minute; it
+was a Jacobite song about "Charlie," and he started to hum it softly.
+Close on the humming came an idea--a braw one; it made him sit up in
+the corner of the throne and clap his hands, while his toes wriggled
+exultantly inside his faery shoes.
+
+"A can do't--a can!"  He shouted it so loud that the baby faeries woke
+up and asked what he was going to do, and gathered about him to listen
+the better.
+
+The pipers played until there were no more memories left and everything
+had come true; and the queen came back to her throne to find Sandy
+waiting, eager-eyed, for her.
+
+"A have a bonny song made for ye.  Wull ye tak it frae me noo?"
+
+"Take what?"
+
+"The hump.  Ye tuk it frae the ither loonie gien he made ye some guid
+music; an' a ha' fetched ye mair--here."  And he tapped his head to
+signify that it was not written down.
+
+"Is the song ready, now?"
+
+Sandy nodded.
+
+"Then turn about and sing it loud enough for all to hear; they must be
+the judges if the song is worth the price of a hump."  And the queen
+smiled very tenderly.
+
+Sandy did as he was bid; he clasped his hands tightly in front of him.
+"'Tis no for the faeries," he explained.  "Ye see--they be hardly
+needin' ony music, wi' muckle o' their ain.  'Tis for the children--the
+children i' horspitals--a bonny song for them to sleepit on."  He
+marked the rhythm a moment with his foot, and hummed it through once to
+be sure he had it.  Then he broke out clearly into the old Jacobite
+air--with words of his own making:
+
+  "Ye weave a bonny primrose ring;
+    Ye hear the River callin';
+  Ye ken the Land whaur faeries sing--
+    Whaur starlicht beams are fallin'.
+  'Tis there the pipers play things true;
+    'Tis there ye'll gae--my dearie--
+  The bonny Land 'at waits for you,
+    Whaur ye'll be nae mair weary.
+
+  "A wee man by a blackthorn-tree
+    Maun stitchit shoes for dancin',
+  An' there's a pair for ye an' me--
+    To set our feet a-prancin'.
+  'Tis muckle gladness 'at ye'll find
+    In Tir-na-n'Og, my dearie;
+  The bonny Land 'at's aye sae kind,
+    Whaur ye'll be nae mair weary.
+
+  "Ye'll ken the birdeen's blithie song,
+    Ye'll hark till flo'ers lauchen;
+  An' see the faeries trippit long
+    By brook an' brae an' bracken.
+  Sae doon your heid--an' shut your een;
+    Gien ye'd be away, my dearie--
+  An' the bonny sauncy faery queen
+    Wull keep ye--nae mair weary."
+
+You may think it uncommonly strange that Sandy could make a song like
+this, by himself; but, you see, he was not entirely alone--there were
+the baby faeries.  They helped a lot; as fast as ever he thought out
+the words they rhymed them for him--this being a part of the A B C of
+faery education.
+
+When the song was finished Sandy turned to the queen again.
+"Aighe--wull it do?"
+
+"If the faeries like it, and think it good enough to send down to the
+children, they will have it all learned by heart and will sing it back
+to you in a minute.  Listen!  Can you hear anything?"
+
+For a moment only the rustle of the trees could be heard.  Sandy
+strained his ears until he caught a low, sobbing sound coming through
+the hazel-leaves.
+
+"'Tis but the wind--greetin'," he said, wistfully.
+
+"Listen again!"
+
+The sound grew, breaking into a cadence and a counter-cadence, and
+thence into a harmony.  "'Tis verra ilk the grand pipe-organ i' the
+kirk, hame in Aberdeen."
+
+"Listen again!"
+
+Mellow and sweet came the notes of the Jacobite air--a bar of it; and
+then the faeries began to sing, sending the song back to Sandy like a
+belated echo:
+
+  "Ye weave a bonny primrose ring;
+    Ye hear the River callin';
+  Ye ken the Land whaur faeries sing--
+    Whaur starlicht beams are fallin'."
+
+"For the love o' Mike!" laughed Sandy.  "A'm unco glad--a am."  He
+dropped to his knees beside the queen and nestled his cheek in the hand
+that was resting in her lap.  "'Tis aricht noo."  And he sighed
+contentedly.
+
+And it was.  The queen leaned over and lifted off the hump as easily as
+you might take the cover from a box.  Sandy stretched himself and
+yawned--after the fashion of any one who has been sleeping a long time
+in a cramped position; and without being in the least conscious of it,
+he sidled up to the arm of the throne and rubbed his back up and
+down--to test the perfect straightness of it.
+
+"'Tis gone--guid!  Wull it nae mair coom back?"  And he eyed the queen
+gravely.
+
+"Never to be burdensome, little lad.  Others may think they see it
+there, but for you the back will be straight and strong."
+
+Rosita came back--empty-handed; she was so busy holding tight to
+Bridget's hand and getting ready to be afraid that she forgot
+everything else.  As for Michael, he gave his patch into Bridget's
+keeping; which brings us to what Bridget remembered.
+
+From the moment that the penny had been given over to her she had been
+weighed down with a mighty responsibility.  The financier of any large
+syndicate is bound to feel harassed at times over the outcome of his
+investments; and Bridget felt personally accountable for the
+forthcoming happiness due the eight other stockholders in her company.
+She was also mindful of what had happened in the past to other persons
+who had speculated heedlessly or unwisely with faery gifts.  There was
+the case of the fisherman and his wife, and the aged couple and their
+sausage, and the old soldier; on the other hand, there was the man from
+Letterkenny who had hoarded his gold and had it turn to dry leaves as a
+punishment.  She must neither keep nor spend foolishly.
+
+"Sure I'll think all round a thing twict afore I have my mind made to
+anythin'; then I'll keep it made for a good bit afore I give over the
+penny."
+
+She repeated this advice while she considered all possible investments,
+but she found nothing to her liking.  The children made frequent
+suggestions, such as bagpipes and clothes-chests, and contrivances for
+feast-spreading and transportation; and Susan was strongly in favor of
+a baby faery to take back to Miss Peggie.  But to all of these Bridget
+shook an emphatic negative.
+
+"Sure ye'd be tired o' the lot afore ye'd gone half-way back.  Like as
+not we'll never have another penny to spend as long as we live, an' I'm
+goin' to see that ye'll all get somethin' that will last."
+
+She was beginning to fear that theirs would be the fate of the man from
+Letterkenny, when she chanced upon Peter and Toby performing for the
+benefit of the pipers.
+
+"Them trusters will never be lettin' Pether take that dog back to the
+horspital," she thought, mindful of the sign in Saint Margaret's yard
+that dogs were not allowed.  "He'd have to be changin' him back into a
+make-believe dog to get him in at all; an' Pether'd never be satisfied
+wi' him that way, now--afther havin' him real."
+
+Her trouble took her to the queen.  "Is there any way of buyin' a dog
+into a horspital?" she asked, solemnly.
+
+"I think it would be easier to buy a home to put him in."
+
+"Could ye--could ye get one for the price of a penny?"  Bridget
+considered her own question, and coupled it with something she
+remembered Sandy had been wishing for back in Ward C.  "Wait a minute;
+I'll ask ye another.  Could ye be buyin' a home for childher an' dogs
+for the price of a penny?"
+
+The queen nodded.
+
+"Would it be big enough for nine childher--an' one dog; an' would it be
+afther havin' all improvements like Miss Peggie an' the House Surgeon?"
+
+Again the queen nodded.
+
+Bridget lowered her voice.  "An' could we put up a sign furninst, 'No
+Trusters Allowed'?"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"Then," said Bridget, with decision, "I've thought all round it twict
+an' my mind's been made to stay; we'll buy a home."
+
+She made a hollow of her two hands and called, "Whist--whist there, all
+o' yez!  Pether an' Pancho--Michael--Susan--do ye hear!"  And when she
+had them rounded up, she counted them twice to make sure they were all
+present.  "Now ye listen."  Bridget raised a commanding finger to the
+circle about her while she exhibited the golden penny.  "Is there any
+one objectin' to payin' this down for a home?"
+
+"What kind of a home?" asked Susan, shrewdly.
+
+"Sure the kind ye live in--same as other folks have that don't live in
+horspitals or asylums."
+
+"Hurrah!" chorused everybody, and Bridget sighed with relief.
+
+"Faith, spendin' money's terrible easy."
+
+She put the penny in the queen's out-stretched hand.  "Do I get a piece
+o' paper sayin' I paid the money on it?" she demanded, remembering her
+responsibility.
+
+This time the queen shook her head.  "No; I give you only my promise;
+but a promise made across a primrose ring is never broken."
+
+"And Toby?" Peter asked it anxiously.
+
+"You must leave him behind.  You see, if you took him back over the
+River of Make-Believe he would have to turn back into a make-believe
+dog again; but--I promise he shall be waiting in the home for you."
+
+The queen led them down the hill to the shore again; and there they
+found the ferry-man ready, waiting.  It is customary, I believe, for
+every one to be ferried home.  The river, that way, is treble as wide,
+and the sandman is always wandering up and down the brink, scattering
+his sand so that one is apt to get too drowsy to swim the whole
+distance.  The children piled into the boat--all but Michael; he stood
+clinging fast to the queen's gray dress.
+
+"Don't you want to go back?" she asked, gently.
+
+"Nyet; the heart by me no longer to bump--here," and Michael pointed to
+the pit of his stomach.
+
+"Aw, come on," called Peter.
+
+But Michael only shook his head and clung closer to the gray dress.
+
+"All right, ferryman; he may stay," said the queen.
+
+"Good-by!" shouted the children.  "Don't forget us, Michael."
+
+"Nyet; goo'-by," Michael shouted back; and then he laughed.  "You tell
+Mi' Peggie--I say--Go' blees you!"
+
+And this was Michael's patch.
+
+The ferryman stood in the stem and swung his great oar.  Slowly the
+boat moved, scrunching over the white pebbles, and slipped into the
+water.  The children saw Michael and the queen waving their hands until
+they had dwindled to shadow-specks in the distance; they watched the
+wake of starshine lengthen out behind them; they listened to the
+ripples lapping at the keel.  To and fro, to and fro, swayed the
+ferryman to the swing of his oar.  "Sleep--sleep--sleep," sang the
+river, running with them.  Bridget stretched her arms about as many
+children as she could compass and held them close while eight pairs of
+eyes slowly--slowly--shut.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN WHICH A PART OF THE BOARD HAS DISTURBING DREAMS
+
+It is a far cry from a primrose ring to a disbanded board meeting; but
+Fancy bridged it in a twinkling and without an effort.  She blew the
+trustees off the door-step of Saint Margaret's, homeward, with an
+insistent buzzing of "ifs" and "buts" in their ears, and the faint
+woodsy odor of primroses under their noses.
+
+To each member of the board entering his own home, unsupported by the
+presence of his fellow-members and the scientific zeal of the Senior
+Surgeon, the business of the afternoon began to change its aspect.  For
+some unaccountable reason--unless we take Fancy into the
+reckoning--this sudden abandoning of Ward C did not seem the simple
+matter of an hour previous; while in perspective even Margaret
+MacLean's outspokenness became less heinous and more human.
+
+As they settled themselves for the evening, each quietly and alone
+after his or her particular fashion of comfort, the "ifs" and "buts"
+were still buzzing riotously; while the primroses, although forgotten,
+clung persistently to the frills or coat lapels where the Youngest and
+Prettiest Trustee had put them.  There it was that Fancy slipped
+unnoticed over the threshold of library, den, and boudoir in turn; and
+with a glint of mischief in her eyes she set the stage in each place to
+her own liking, while she summoned whatever players she chose to do her
+bidding.
+
+Now the trustees were very different from the children in the matter of
+telling what they remembered of that May Eve.  Of course they were
+hampered with all the self-consciousness and skepticism of grown-ups,
+which would make them quite unwilling to own up to anything strange or
+out of the conventional path, not in a hundred years.  Therefore I am
+forced to leave their part of the telling to Fancy, and you may believe
+or discredit as much or as little as you choose; only I am hoping that
+by this time you have acquired at least a sprinkling of fern-seed in
+your eyes.  You may have forgotten that fern-seed is the most subtle of
+eye-openers known to Fancy; and that it enables you to see the things
+that have existed only in your imagination.  It is very scarce
+nowadays, and hard to find, for the bird-fanciers no longer keep
+it--and the nursery-gardeners have forgotten how to grow it.  In the
+light of what happened afterward, I think you will agree that Fancy has
+not been far wrong concerning the trustees; she has a way of putting
+things a little differently, that is all.
+
+To be sure, you may argue that it was all chance, conscience, or even
+indigestion; because the trustees dined late they must have dined
+heavily.  But if you do, you know very well that Fancy will answer:
+"Poof!  Nothing of the kind.  It was a simple matter of primrose magic
+and--faeries; nothing else."  And she ought to know, for she was there.
+
+The President began it.
+
+He sat in his den, yawning over the annual report of the United
+Charities; he had already yawned a score of times, and the type had
+commenced running together in a zigzagging line that baffled
+deciphering.  The President inserted a finger in the report to mark his
+place, making a mental note to consult his oculist the following day;
+after which he leaned back and closed his eyes for the space of a
+moment--to clear his vision.
+
+When he opened his eyes again his vision had cleared to such an extent
+that he was quite positive he was seeing things that were not in the
+room.  Little shadowy figures haunted the dark places: corners, and
+curtained recesses, and the unlighted hall beyond.  They peered at him
+shyly, with such witching, happy faces and eyes that laughed coaxingly.
+The President found himself peering back at them and scrutinizing the
+faces closely.  Oddly enough he could recognize many, not by name, of
+course, but he could place them in the many institutions over which he
+presided.  It was very evident that they were expecting something of
+him; they were looking at him that way.  For once in his life he was at
+loss for the correct thing to say.  He tried closing his eyes two or
+three times to see if he could not blink them into vanishing; but when
+he looked again there they were, more eager-eyed than before.
+
+"Well," he found himself saying at last--"well, what is it?"
+
+That was all; but it brought the children like a Hamlin troop to the
+piper's cry--flocking about him unafraid.  Never in all his charitable
+life had he ever had children gather about him and look up at him this
+way.  Little groping hands pulled at his cuffs or steadied themselves
+on his knee; more venturesome ones slipped into his or hunted their way
+into his coat pockets.  They were such warm, friendly, trusting little
+hands--and the faces; the President of Saint Margaret's Free Hospital
+for Children caught himself wondering why in all his charitable
+experience he had never had a child overstep a respectful distance
+before, or look at him save with a strange, alien expression.
+
+He sat very still for fear of frightening them off; he liked the warmth
+and friendliness of their little bodies pressed close to him; there was
+something pleasantly hypnotic in the feeling of small hands tugging at
+him.  Suddenly he became conscious of a change in the children's faces;
+the gladness was fading out and in its place was creeping a perplexed,
+questioning sorrow.
+
+"Don't."  And the President patted assuringly as many little backs as
+he could reach.  "What--what was it you expected?"
+
+He was answered by a quivering of lips and more insistent tugs at his
+pockets.  It flashed upon him--out of some dim memory--that children
+liked surprises discovered unexpectedly in some one's pockets.  Was
+this why they had searched him out?  He found himself frantically
+wishing that he had something stowed away somewhere for them.  His
+hands followed theirs into all the numerous pockets he possessed;
+trousers, coat, and vest were searched twice over; they were even
+turned inside out in the last hope of disclosing just one surprise.
+
+"I should think," said the President, addressing himself, "that a man
+might keep something pleasant in empty pockets.  What are pockets for,
+anyway?"
+
+The children shook their heads sorrowfully.
+
+"Wouldn't to-morrow do?" he suggested, hopefully; but there was no
+response from the children, and the weight that had been settling down
+upon him, in the region of his chest, noticeably increased.  He tried
+to shake it off, it was so depressing--like the accruing misfortune of
+some pending event.
+
+"Don't shake," said a voice behind him; "that isn't your misfortune.
+You will only shake it off on the children, and it's time enough for
+them to bear it when they wake up in the morning and find out--"
+
+"Find out what?"  The President asked it fearfully.
+
+"Find out--find out--" droned the voice, monotonously.
+
+The President sat up very straight in his chair.  "The children--the
+children."  He remembered now--they were the children from the
+incurable ward at Saint Margaret's.
+
+He sank back with a feeling of great helplessness, and closed his eyes
+again.  And there he sat, immovable, his finger still marking his place
+in the report of the United Charities.
+
+The Oldest Trustee sat alone, knitting comforters for the Preventorium
+patients.  Like many another elderly person, her usual retiring hour
+was later than that of the younger members of her household,
+undoubtedly due to the frequent cat-naps snatched from the evening.
+
+The Oldest Trustee had a habit of knitting the day's events in with her
+yarn.  What she had done and said and heard were all thought over again
+to the rhythmic click of her needles.  And the results at the end of
+the evening were usually a finished comforter and a comfortable
+feeling.  This night, however, the knitting lagged and the thoughts
+were unaccountably dissatisfying; she could not even settle down to a
+cat-nap with the habitual serenity.
+
+"I don't know why I should feel disturbed," and the Oldest Trustee
+prodded her yarn ball with a disquieting needle, "but I certainly miss
+the usual gratification of a day well spent."
+
+She closed her eyes, hoping thereby to lose herself for the space of a
+moment, but instead--  She was startled to hear voices at her very
+elbow; a number of persons must have entered the room, but how they
+could have done so without her knowing it she could not understand.  Of
+course they thought her asleep; it was just as well to let them think
+so.  She really felt too tired to talk.
+
+"Mother's undoubtedly growing old.  Have you noticed how much she naps
+in the evening, now?"  It was the voice of her youngest daughter.
+
+"I heard her telling some one the other day she was five years younger
+than she is.  That's a sure sign," and her son laughed an amused little
+chuckle.
+
+"I can tell you a surer one."  This time it was her oldest
+daughter--her first-born.  "Haven't you noticed how all mother's little
+peculiarities are growing on her?  She is getting so much more
+dictatorial and preachy.  Of course, we know that mother means to be
+kind and helpful, but she has always been so--tactless--and blunt; and
+it's growing worse and worse."
+
+"I have often wondered how all her charity people take her; it must
+come tough on them, sometimes.  Gee!  Can't you see her raising those
+lorgnettes of hers and saying, 'My good boy, do you read your Bible?'
+or, 'My little girl, I hope you remember to be grateful for all you
+receive.'  Say, wouldn't you hate to have charity stuffed down your
+throat that way?" and the oldest and favorite grandson groaned out his
+feelings.
+
+"That isn't what I should mind the most."  It was the youngest daughter
+speaking again.  "I've been with mother when she has made remarks about
+the patients in the hospital, loud enough for them to hear, and I was
+so mortified I wanted to sink through the floor, And you simply can't
+shut mother up.  Of course she doesn't realize how it sounds; she
+doesn't believe they hear her, but I know they do.  I wonder how mother
+would like to have us stand around her--and we know her and love
+her--and have us say she was getting deaf, or her hair was coming out,
+or her memory was beginning to fail, or--"
+
+The Oldest Trustee smiled grimly.  "Oh, don't stop, my dear.  If there
+is any other failing you can think of--"  She opened her eyes with a
+start.  "Goodness gracious!" she exclaimed.  "My grandson is in college
+five hundred miles away, and my daughter is abroad.  Have I been
+dreaming?"
+
+The Meanest Trustee unlocked the drawer of his desk and took out a
+cigar.  He did not intend that his sons or his servants should smoke at
+his expense; furthermore, it was well not to spread temptation before
+others.  He took up the evening paper and examined the creases
+carefully.  He wished to make sure it had not been unfolded before;
+being the one to pay for the news in his house, he preferred to be the
+first one to read it.  The creases proved perfectly satisfactory; so he
+lighted his cigar, crossed his feet, and settled himself--content in
+his own comfort.  The smoke spun into spirals about his head; and after
+he had skimmed the cream of the day's events he read more leisurely,
+stopping to watch the spirals with a certain lazy enjoyment.  They
+seemed to grow increasingly larger.  They spun themselves about into
+all kinds of shapes, wavering and illusive, that defied the somewhat
+atrophied imagination of the Meanest Trustee.
+
+"Hallucinations," he barked to himself.  "I believe I understand now
+what is implied when people are said to have them."
+
+Suddenly the spirals commenced to lengthen downward instead of upward.
+To the amazement of the Meanest Trustee he discovered them shifting
+into human shapes: here was the form of a child, here a youth, here a
+lover and his lass, here a little old dame, and scores more; while into
+the corners of the room drifted others that turned into the drollest of
+droll pipers--with kilt and brata and cap.  It made him feel as if he
+had been dropped into the center of a giant kaleidoscope, with
+thousands of pieces of gray smoke turning, at the twist of a hand, into
+form and color, motion and music.  The pipers piped; the figures
+danced, whirling and whirling about him, and their laughter could be
+heard above the pipers' music.
+
+"Stop!" barked the Meanest Trustee at last; but they only danced the
+faster.  "Stop!"  And he shook his fist at the pipers, who played
+louder and merrier.  "Stop!"  And he pounded the arms of his chair with
+both hands.  "I hate music!  I hate children!  I hate noise and
+confusion!  Stop! I say."
+
+Still the pipers played and the figures danced on; and the Meanest
+Trustee was compelled to hear and see.  To him it seemed an
+interminable time.  He would have stopped his ears with his fingers and
+shut his eyes, only, strangely enough, he could not.  But at last it
+all came to an end--the figures floated laughing away, and the pipers
+came and stood about him, their caps in their hands out-stretched
+before him.
+
+He eyed them suspiciously.  "What's that for?"
+
+"It is time to pay the pipers," said one.
+
+"Let those who dance pay; that's according to the adage," and he smiled
+caustically at his own wit.
+
+"It's a false adage," said a second, "like many another that you follow
+in your world.  It is not the ones who dance that should pay, but the
+ones who keep others from dancing--the ones who help to rob the world
+of some of its joy.  And the ones who rob the most must pay the
+heaviest.  Come!"  And he shook his cap significantly.
+
+A sudden feeling of helplessness overpowered the Meanest Trustee.
+Muttering something about "pickpockets" and "hold-ups," he ferreted
+around in his pocket and brought out a single coin, which he dropped
+ungraciously into the insistent cap.
+
+"What's that?" asked the head piper, curiously.
+
+"It looks to me like money--good money--and I'm throwing it away on a
+parcel of rascals."
+
+"Come, come, my good man," and the piper tapped him gently on the
+shoulder, in the fashion of a professional philanthropist when he
+remonstrates with a professional vagrant; "don't you see you are not
+giving your soul any room to grow in?  A great deal of joy might have
+reached the world across your open palm.  Instead, you have crushed it
+in a hard, tight fist.  You must pay now for all the souls you've kept
+from dancing.  Come--fill all our caps."
+
+"Fill!"  There was something akin to actual terror in the voice of the
+Meanest Trustee.  He could feel himself growing pale; his tongue seemed
+to drop back in his throat, choking him.  "That would take a great deal
+of money," he managed to wheeze out at last; and then he braced
+himself, his hands clutched deep in his pockets.  "I will never pay;
+never, never, never!"
+
+"Oh yes, you will!" and the piper's smile was insultingly cheerful.
+"It was a great deal of joy, you know," he reminded him.  "Come,
+lads"--to the other pipers--"hold out your caps, there."
+
+The Meanest Trustee had the strange experience of feeling himself
+worked by a force outside of his own will; it was as if he had been a
+marionette with a master-hand pulling the wires.  Quite mechanically he
+found himself taking something out of his pocket and dropping it into
+the caps thrust under his very nose, and at the same time his pockets
+began to fill with money--his money.  In and out, in and out, his hands
+flew like wooden members, until there was not a coin left and the last
+piper turned away satisfied.  He closed his eyes, for he was feeling
+very weak; then he became conscious of the touch of a warm, friendly
+hand on his wrist and he heard the voice of the old family doctor--the
+one who had set his leg when he was a little shaver and had fallen off
+the banisters, sliding downstairs.
+
+"You will recover," it was saying.  "A good rest is all you need.
+Sometimes there is nothing so beneficial and speedy as the
+old-fashioned treatment of bleeding a patient."
+
+Some warm ashes dropped across the wrist of the Meanest Trustee and
+scattered on the floor; his cigar had gone out.
+
+The Executive Trustee dozed at his study table.  For months he had been
+working his brain overtime; he had still more to demand of it, and he
+was deliberately detaching it from immediate executive consciousness
+for a few minutes that he might set it to work again all the harder.
+
+The Executive Trustee knew that he was dozing; but for all that it was
+unbearable--this feeling of being bound by coil after coil of rope
+until he could not stir a finger.  A terrifying numbness began to creep
+over him--as if his body had died.  The thought came to him like a
+shock that he had an active, commanding intelligence, still alive, and
+nothing for it to command.  What did people do who had to live with
+dead, paralyzed bodies, dependent upon others to execute the dictates
+of their brains?  Did not their brains go in the end, too, and leave
+just a breathing husk behind?  The thought became a horror to him.
+
+And yet people did live, just so.  Yes, even children.
+Somewhere--somewhere--he knew of hundreds of them--or were there only a
+few?  He tried to remember, but he could not.  He did remember,
+however, that he had once heard them laughing; and he found himself
+wondering now at the strangeness of it.  He hoped there was some one
+who would always keep them laughing--they deserved that much out of
+life, anyway; and some one who could understand and could administer to
+them lovingly--yes, that was the word--lovingly!  As for himself, there
+was no one who could supply for him that strength and power for action
+that he had always worshiped; he must exist for the rest of his life
+simply as a thinking, ineffective intelligence.  The Executive Trustee
+forgot that he was dozing.  He wrestled with the ropes that bound him
+like a crazed man; he called for help again and again, until his lips
+could make no sound.  For the first time in his remembrance he tasted
+the bitterness of despair.  Then it was that the door opened
+noiselessly and Margaret MacLean entered, her finger to her lips.  Coil
+after coil she unwound until he was free once more and could feel the
+marvelous response of muscle and nerve impulse.  With a cry--half sob,
+half thankfulness--he flung his arms across the table and buried his
+face in them.
+
+The Executive Trustee slept heavily, after the fashion of a man
+exhausted from hard labor.
+
+In the house left by the Richest Trustee a little gray wisp of a woman
+sat huddled in a great carved chair close to the hearth, thinking and
+thinking and thinking.  The fire was blazing high, trying its best to
+burn away the heart-cold and loneliness that clung about everything
+like a Dover fog.  For years she had ceased to exist apart from her
+husband--her thoughts, her wishes, her interests were of his creating;
+she had drawn her very nourishment of life from his strong, dominant,
+genial personality.  It was parasitic--oh yes, but it had been
+something rarely beautiful to them both--her great need of him.  The
+need had grown all the greater because no children had come to fill her
+life; and the need of something to take care of had grown with him.
+Their love, and her dependence, had become the greatest factors in his
+life; in hers they were the only ones.  Therefore, it was hardly
+strange, now that he had died, that she should find it hard to take up
+an individual existence again; to be truthful, she had found it
+impossible--she had not even existed.
+
+The habit of individual, separate thinking had grown rusty, and as she
+sat before the hearth ideas came slowly.  The room was dim--lighted
+only by the firelight; and in that dimness her mind began to stir and
+stretch and yawn itself awake, like a creature that had been
+hibernating through a long, dark winter.  Suddenly the widow of the
+Richest Trustee broke out into a feeble little laugh--a convalescing
+laugh that acted as if it was just getting about for the first time.
+
+"I haven't the least idea what is the matter with me," she said,
+addressing the fire, "but I think--I think--I'm becoming alive again."
+
+The fire gave an appreciative chuckle--it even slapped one of the logs
+on the back; then it sputtered and blazed the harder, just as if it
+were ashamed of showing any emotion.
+
+"It is funny," agreed the little gray wisp of a woman, "but I actually
+feel as I used to when I was a little girl and Christmas Eve had come,
+or Hallowe'en, and--and--  What other night in the year was it that I
+used to feel creepy and expectant--as if something wonderful was going
+to happen?"
+
+The fire coughed twice, as if it would have liked to remind her that it
+was May Eve, but felt it might be an intrusion.
+
+"I believe," she continued, speculatively--"I believe I am going to
+begin to think things and do them again; and what's more, I believe I
+am going to like doing them."
+
+The fire chuckled again, and danced about for a minute in an absurd
+fashion; it was so absurd that one of the logs broke a sap-vessel.
+After that the fire settled down to its intended vocation, that of
+making dream-pictures out of red and gold flames, and black, charred
+embers.
+
+The widow of the Richest Trustee watched them happily for a long time,
+until they became very definite and actual pictures.  Then she got up,
+went to her desk, and wrote two letters.
+
+The first was addressed to "The Board of Trustees of Saint Margaret's
+Free Hospital for Children"; the second was addressed to "Miss Margaret
+MacLean."  They were both sealed and mailed that night.
+
+What befell the other trustees does not matter, either from the
+standpoint of Fancy or of what happened afterward; moreover, it was
+nearly midnight, and what occurs after that on May Eve does not count.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE LOVE-TALKER
+
+All through the evening Saint Margaret's had been frankly miserable.
+Nurses gathered in groups in the nurses' annex and talked about the
+closing of the incurable ward and the going of Margaret MacLean.  The
+passing of the incurables mattered little to them, one way or another,
+but they knew what it mattered to the nurse in charge, and they were
+just beginning to realize what she had meant to them all.  The
+Superintendent felt so much concerned that she dropped her official
+manner when she chanced upon Margaret MacLean on her way from supper.
+
+"Oh, my dear--my dear"--and the Superintendent's voice had almost
+broken--"what shall we do without you?  You have kept Saint Margaret's
+human--and wholesome for the rest of us."
+
+The House Surgeon had been miserable unto the third degree.  It had
+forced him into doing all those things he had left undone for months
+passed; and he bustled through the building--from pharmacy to
+laboratory and from operating-room to supply-closets--giving the
+impression of a very scientific man, while he was inwardly praying for
+a half-dozen minutes alone with Margaret MacLean.  He had passed her
+more than once in the corridors, but she had eluded him each time,
+brushing by him with a tightening of the lips and a little shake of the
+head, half pleading, half commanding.  At last, in grim despair, he
+gave up appearances and patrolled the second-floor hall until the night
+nurse fixed upon him such a greenly suspicious eye that he fled to his
+quarters--vowing unspeakable things.
+
+Even old Cassie, the scrub-woman, shared in the general misery--Cassie,
+who had brewed the egg-shell charm against Trustee Days.  She had
+stayed past her hours for a glimpse of "Miss Peggie," with the best
+intention in the world of cheering her up.  When the glimpse came,
+however, she stood mute--tears channeling the old wrinkled face--while
+the nurse patted her hands and made her laugh through the tears.  In
+fact, Margaret MacLean had been kept so busy doling out cheer and
+consolation to others that she had had no time to remember her own
+trouble--not until Saint Margaret's had gone to bed.
+
+She was on her way for a final visit to her ward--the visit she had
+told Bridget she would make to see if the promise had been kept--when a
+line from Hauptman's faery play flashed through her mind: "At dawn we
+are kings; at night we are only beggars."
+
+How true it was of her--this day.  How beggared she felt!  The fact
+that she was very nearly penniless troubled her very little; it was the
+homelessness--friendlessness--that frightened her.  She had never had
+but two friends: the one who had gone so long ago was past helping her
+now; the other--
+
+No; she had made up her mind some hours before that she should slip
+away in the morning without saying anything to the House Surgeon.  It
+would make it so much easier for him.  Otherwise--he might--because of
+his friendship--say or do something he would have to regret all his
+life.  She had been very much in earnest when she had told the Senior
+Surgeon on the stairs that such as she laid no claim to the every-day
+happiness that felt to the lot of others.  That was why she had kept
+persistently out of the House Surgeon's way all the evening.
+
+She pushed back the door of Ward C.  The night light in the hall
+outside was shaded; only a glimmer came through the windows from the
+street lamps below; consequently things could not be seen very clearly
+or distinguishably in the room.  Across the threshold her foot slid
+over something soft and slippery; stooping, her hand closed upon a
+flower, while she brushed another.  Puzzled, she felt her way over to
+the table in the center of the room, where she had put the green
+Devonshire bowl.  It was empty.
+
+"That's funny," she murmured, her mind attempting to ferret out an
+explanation.  She dropped to her knees and scanned the floor closely.
+There they were, the primroses, a curving trail of them stretching from
+the head of Pancho's bed to the foot of Michael's.  She choked back an
+exclamation just as a shadow cut off the light from the hall.  It was a
+man's shadow, and the voice of the House Surgeon came over the
+threshold in a whisper:
+
+"What are you doing--burying ghosts?"
+
+"Come and see, and let the light in after you."
+
+The House Surgeon came and stood behind her where she knelt.  She
+looked so little and childlike there that he wanted to pick her up and
+tell her--oh, such a host of things!  But he was a wise House Surgeon,
+and his experience on the stairs had not counted for nothing; moreover,
+he was a great believer in the psychological moment, so he peered over
+her shoulder and tried to make out what she was looking at.
+
+"Faded flowers," he volunteered at last, somewhat doubtfully.
+
+"A primrose ring," she contradicted.  "But who ever heard of one in a
+hospital?  Take care--"  For the surgeon's shoe was carelessly knocking
+some of the blossoms out of place.  "Don't you know that no one must
+disturb a primrose ring?  It's sacred to Fancy; and there is no telling
+what is happening inside there to-night."
+
+"What?"  The House Surgeon asked it as breathlessly as any little boy
+might have.  Science had goaded him hard along the road of established
+facts, thereby causing him to miss many pleasant things which he still
+looked back upon regretfully, and found himself eager for, at times.
+Of course, he had scoffed at them aloud and before Margaret MacLean,
+but inwardly he adored them.
+
+She did not answer; she was too busy wondering about something to hear
+the House Surgeon's question.  Her eyes looked very big and round in
+the darkness, and her face wore the little-girl scarey look as she
+reached up for his hand and clutched it tight, while her other hand
+pointed across the primrose ring to the row of beds.
+
+"See, they look empty, quite---quite empty."
+
+"Just nerves."  And he patted the hand in his reassuringly; he tried
+his best to pat it in the old, big-brother way.  "You've had an awfully
+trying day--most women would be in their rooms having hysteria or
+doldrums."
+
+Still she did not hear.  Her eyes were traveling from cot to crib and
+on to cot again, as they had once before that night.  "Every single bed
+looks empty," she repeated.  "The clothes tumbled as if the children
+had slipped quietly out from under them."  She shivered ever so
+slightly.  "Perhaps they have found out they are not wanted any longer
+and have run away."
+
+"Come, come," the House Surgeon spoke in a gruff whisper.  "I believe
+you're getting feverish."  And mechanically his ringers closed over her
+pulse.  Then he pulled her to her feet.  "Go over to those beds this
+minute and see for yourself that every child is there, safe and sound
+asleep."
+
+But she held back, laughing nervously.  "No, no; we mustn't spoil the
+magic of the ring."  Her voice trailed off into a dreamy, wistful
+monotone.  "Who knows--Cinderella's godmother came to her when it was
+only a matter of ragged clothes and a party; the need here was far
+greater.  Who knows?"  She caught her breath with a sudden in-drawn
+cry.  "Why, to-night is May Eve!"
+
+"Why, of course it is!" agreed the House Surgeon, as if he had known it
+from the beginning.
+
+"And who knows but the faeries may have come and stolen them all away?"
+
+Now the House Surgeon was old in understanding, although he was young
+in years; and he knew it was wiser sometimes to give in to the whims of
+a tired, overwrought brain.  He knew without being told--for Margaret
+MacLean would never have told--how tired and hopelessly heart-sick and
+mind-sick she was to-night.  What he did not know, however, was how
+pitifully lonely and starved her life had always been; and that this
+was the hour for the full conscious reckoning of it.
+
+She had often said, whimsically, "Those who are born with wooden
+instead of golden spoons in their mouths had better learn very young to
+keep them well scoured, or they'll find them getting so rough and
+splintered that they can't possibly eat with them."  She had followed
+her own advice bravely, and kept happy; but now even the wooden spoon
+had been taken from her.
+
+The House Surgeon lifted her up and put her gently into the rocker,
+while he sat down on the corner of the table, neighbor to the green
+Devonshire bowl.
+
+Perhaps Margaret MacLean was not to find bitterness, after all; perhaps
+it would be his glad good fortune to keep it from her.  It was
+surprising the way he felt his misery dwindling, and instantly he
+pulled up his courage--another hole.
+
+"I think you said 'faeries,'" he suggested, seriously.  "Why not
+faeries?"
+
+She nodded in equal seriousness.  "Why not?  They always come May Eve
+to the lonely of heart; and even a hospital might have faeries once in
+a generation.  Only--only why couldn't they have taken me with the
+children?  It wasn't exactly fair to leave me behind, was it?"
+
+Her lips managed to keep reasonably steady, but she was wishing all the
+time that the House Surgeon would go and leave her free to be foolishly
+childish and weak.  She wanted to drop down beside Bridget's bed and
+sob out her trouble.
+
+But the House Surgeon had a very permanent look as he went on soberly
+talking.
+
+"Well, you see, they took the children first because they were all
+ready.  Probably, very probably, they are sending for you
+later--special messenger.  It's still some minutes before midnight; and
+that's the time things like that happen.  Isn't it?"
+
+"Perhaps."  A little amused smile crept into the corners of her mouth
+while she rummaged about in some old memories for something she had
+almost forgotten.  "Perhaps"--she began again--"they will send the
+Love-Talker."
+
+"The what?"
+
+"The Love-Talker.  Old Cassie used to tell us about him, when I was an
+'incurable.'  He's a faery youth who comes on May Eve in the guise of
+some well-appearing young man and beguiles a maid back with him into
+faeryland.  He's a very ardent wooer--so Cassie said--and there's no
+maid living who can resist him."
+
+"Wish I'd had a course with him," muttered the House Surgeon under his
+breath.  Then he gripped the table hard with both hands while the
+spirit of mischief leaped, flagrant, into his eyes.  "Would you go with
+him--if he came?" he asked, intensely.
+
+"If he came--if he came--" she repeated, dreamily.  "How do I know what
+I would do?  It would all depend upon the way he wooed."
+
+Unexpectedly the House Surgeon jumped to his feet, making a
+considerable clatter.
+
+"Hush! you'll waken the children."
+
+"But they're not here," he reminded her.
+
+"Yes, I know; but you might waken them, just the same."
+
+Instead of answering, the House Surgeon stepped behind the rocker and
+lifted her out of it bodily; then his hands closed over hers and he
+lifted them to her eyes, thereby blind-folding them.  "Now," he
+commanded, "take two steps forward."
+
+She did it obediently; and then stood waiting for further orders.
+
+"You are now inside this magical primrose ring; and you said yourself,
+a moment ago, there was no telling what might happen inside.  Keep very
+still; don't move, don't speak.  Remember you mustn't uncover your
+eyes, or the spell will be broken.  Hark!  Can you hear something--some
+one coming nearer and nearer and nearer?"
+
+For the space of a dozen breaths nothing could be heard in Ward C; that
+is--unless one was tactless enough to mention the sound of two
+throbbing hearts.  One fluttered, frightened and hesitating; the other
+thumped, steady and determined.  Then out of the darkness came the
+striking of the hospital clock on the tower--twelve long, mournful
+tolls--and one of the House Surgeon's arms slipped gently about the
+shoulders of Margaret MacLean.
+
+"Dearest, the Love-Talker has turned so completely human that he has to
+say at the outset he's not half good enough for you, But he wants
+you--he wants you, just the same, to carry back with him to his
+faery-land.  It will be rather a funny little old faery-land, made up
+of work and poverty--and love; but, you see, the last is so big and
+strong it can shoulder the other two and never know it's carrying a
+thing.  If you'll only come, dearest, you can make it the finest, most
+magical faeryland a man ever set up home-making in."
+
+Another silence settled over Ward C.
+
+"Well--" said the House Surgeon, breaking it at last and sounding a
+trifle nervous.  "Well--"
+
+"I thought you said I wasn't to move or speak, or the spell would be
+broken?"
+
+"That's right, excellent nurse--followed doctor's orders exactly."  He
+was smiling radiantly now, only no one could see.  Slowly he drew her
+hands away from her eyes and kissed the lids.  "You can open them if
+you solemnly promise not to be disappointed when you see the
+Love-Talker has stepped into an ordinary house surgeon's uniform and
+looks like the--devil."  With a laugh the House Surgeon gathered her
+close in his arms.
+
+"The devil was only a rebelling angel," she murmured, contentedly.
+
+"But I'm not rebelling.  Bless those trustees!  If they hadn't put us
+both out of the hospital we might be jogging along for the next ten
+years on the wholesome, easily digested diet of friendship, and never
+dreamed of the feast we were missing--like this--and this--and--"
+
+Margaret MacLean buried her face in the uniform with a sob.
+
+"What is it, dearest?  Don't you like them?"
+
+"I--love--them.  Don't you understand?  I never belonged to anybody
+before in all my life, so no one ever wanted to--"
+
+The rest was unintelligible, but perfectly satisfactory to the House
+Surgeon.  He held her even closer while she sobbed out the tears that
+had been intended for the edge of Bridget's bed; and when they were
+spent he wiped away all traces with some antiseptic gauze that happened
+to be in his pocket.
+
+"I will never be foolish again and remember what lies behind to-night,"
+said Margaret MacLean, knowing full well that she would be, and that
+often, because of the joy that would lie in remembering and comparing.
+"Now tell me, did they make you go, too?"
+
+"The President told me, very courteously, that he felt sure I would be
+wishing to find another position elsewhere better suited to my rising
+abilities; and if an opportunity should come--next month, perhaps--they
+would not wish in any way to interfere with my leaving."
+
+"Ugh!  I--"
+
+"No, you don't, dearest.  You couldn't expect them to want us around
+after the things we magnanimously refrained from saying--but so
+perfectly implied."
+
+"All right, I'll love them instead, if you want me to, only--"  And she
+puckered her forehead into deep furrows of perplexity.  "I have kept it
+out of my mind all through the evening, but we might as well face it
+now as to-morrow morning.  What is going to happen to us?"
+
+The House Surgeon turned her about until she was again looking across
+the line of scattered blossoms--into the indistinguishable darkness
+beyond.  He laughed joyously, as a man can laugh when everything lies
+before him and there are no regrets left behind.  "Have you forgotten
+so soon?  We are to cross the primrose ring--right here; and follow the
+road--there--into faeryland after the children."
+
+"The beds really do look empty."
+
+"They certainly do."
+
+"And we'll find the children there?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And I'll not have to give them up?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"And we'll all be happy together--somewhere?"
+
+"Yes, somewhere!"
+
+She turned quickly and reached out her arms to him hungrily.  "I know
+now why a maid always follows the Love-Talker when he comes a-wooing."
+
+"Why, dearest?"
+
+"Because he makes her believe in him and the country where he is taking
+her, and that's all a woman asks."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARD
+
+Everybody woke with a start on the morning following the 30th of April;
+things began to happen even before the postman had made his first
+rounds.  The operators at the telephone switchboards were rushed at an
+unconscionably early hour, considering that their station compassed the
+Avenue.  The President was trying to get the trustees, Saint
+Margaret's, and the Senior Surgeon; the trustees were trying to get one
+another; while the Senior Surgeon was rapidly covering the distance
+between his home and the hospital--his mind busy with a multitude of
+things, none of which he had ever written with capitals.
+
+Saint Margaret's was astir before its usual hour; there was a tang of
+joyousness in the air, and everybody's heart and mind, strangely
+enough, seemed to be in festal attire, although nobody was outwardly
+conscious of it.  It was all the more inexplicable because Saint
+Margaret's had gone to bed miserable, and events naturally pointed
+toward depression: Margaret MacLean's coming departure, the abandoning
+of Ward C, the House Surgeon's resignation, and Michael's empty crib.
+
+Ward C had wakened with a laugh.  Margaret MacLean, who had been moving
+noiselessly about the room for some time, picking up the withered
+remains of the primrose ring, looked up with apprehension.  The tears
+she had shed over Michael's crib were quite dry, and she had a brave
+little speech on the end of her tongue ready for the children's
+awakening.  Eight pairs of sleepy eyes were rubbed open, and then
+unhesitatingly turned in the direction of the empty crib in the corner.
+
+"Michael has gone away." she said, softly, steadying her voice with
+great care.  "He has gone where he will be well--and his heart sound
+and strong."
+
+She was wholly unprepared for the children's response.  It was so
+unexpected, in fact, that for the moment she tottered perilously near
+the verge of hysterics.  The children actually grinned; while Bridget
+remarked, with a chuckle:
+
+"Ye are afther meanin' that he didn't come back--that's what!"  And
+then she added, as an afterthought, "He said to tell ye 'God bless ye,'
+Miss Peggie."
+
+Margaret MacLean did not know whether to be shocked or glad that the
+passing of a comrade had brought no sign of grief.  Instead of being
+either, she went on picking up the primroses and wondering.  As for the
+children, they lay back peacefully in their beds, their eyes laughing
+riotously.  And every once in a while they would look over at one
+another, giving the funniest little expressive nods, which seemed to
+say: "I know what you're thinking about, and you know what I'm thinking
+about, so what's the need of talking.  But when is it going to happen?"
+
+The House Surgeon brought up her mail; it was an excuse to see her
+again before his official visit.  "Are the children very much broken up
+over it?" he asked, anxiously, outside the door.
+
+For answer Margaret MacLean beckoned him and pointed to the eight
+occupied cots--unquestionably serene and happy.
+
+"Well, I'll be--" began the House Surgeon, retiring precipitously back
+to the door again; but the nurse put a silencing finger over his lips.
+
+"Hush, dear!  The children are probably clearer visioned than we are.
+I have the distinct feeling this morning of being very blind and
+stupid, while they seem--oh, so wise."
+
+The House Surgeon grunted expressively.  "Well, perhaps they won't take
+your going away so dreadfully to heart--now; or theirs, for that
+matter."
+
+"I hope not," and then she smiled wistfully.  "But I thought you told
+me last night we were all going together?  At any rate, I am not going
+to tell them anything.  If it must be it must be, and I shall slip off
+quietly, when the children are napping, and leave the trustees to tell."
+
+She looked her mail over casually; there were the usual number of
+advertisements, a letter from one of the nurses who had gone South, and
+another in an unfamiliar hand-writing.  She tore off the corner of the
+last, and, running her finger down the flap, she commented:
+
+"Looks like quality.  A letter outside the profession is a very rare
+thing for me."
+
+She read the letter through without a sound, and then she read it
+again, the House Surgeon watching, the old big-brother look gone for
+ever from his face, and in its place a worshipful proprietorship.  The
+effect of the letter was undeniably Aprilish; she looked up at the
+House Surgeon with the most radiant of smiles, while her eyes spilled
+recklessly over.
+
+"How did you know it?  How did you know it?" she repeated.
+
+He was trying his best to find out what it was all about when one of
+the nurses came hurrying down the corridor.
+
+"You are both wanted down in the board-room.  They have called a
+special meeting of the trustees for nine o'clock; everybody's here and
+acting decidedly peculiar, I think.  Why, as I passed the door I am
+sure I saw the President slapping the Senior Surgeon on the back.  I
+never heard of anything like this happening before."
+
+"Come," said Margaret MacLean to the House Surgeon.  "If we walk down
+very slowly we will have time enough to read the letter on the way."
+
+As the nurse had intimated, it was an altogether unprecedented meeting.
+Formality had been gently tossed out of the window; after which the
+President sat, not behind his desk, but upon it--an open letter in his
+hand.  His whole attitude suggested a wish to banish, as far as it lay
+within his power, the atmosphere of the previous afternoon.
+
+"Here is a letter to be considered first," he said, a bit gravely.  "It
+makes rather a good prologue to our reconsideration of the incurable
+ward," and the ghost of a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.
+"This is from the widow of the Richest Trustee."  He read, slowly:
+
+
+"MESDAMES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD,--I thank you for your courtesy in
+asking me to fill my husband's place as one of the trustees of Saint
+Margaret's.  Until this afternoon I had every intention of so doing;
+but I cannot think now that my husband would wish me to continue his
+support of an institution whose directors have so far forgotten the
+name under which they dispense their charity as to put science and
+pride first.  As for myself--I find I am strongly interested in
+incurables--your incurables.
+      Yours very truly"
+
+
+The President laid the letter behind him on the desk, while the entire
+board gasped in amazement.
+
+"Well, I'll be hanged!" muttered the Disagreeable Trustee.
+
+"But just think of _her_--writing it!" burst forth the Oldest Trustee.
+
+The Meanest Trustee barked out an exclamation, but nothing followed it;
+undoubtedly that was due to the President's interrupting:
+
+"I think if we had received this yesterday we should have been
+very--exceedingly--indignant; we should have censured the writer
+severely.  As it is--hmm--"  The President stopped short; it was as if
+his mind had refused to tabulate his feelings.
+
+"As it is"--the Executive Trustee took up the dropped thread and went
+on--"we have decided to reconsider the removal of the incurable ward
+without any--preaching--or priming of conscience."
+
+"I am so glad we really had changed our minds first.  I should so hate
+to have that insignificant little woman think that we were influenced
+by anything she might write.  Wouldn't you?"  And the Youngest and
+Prettiest Trustee dimpled ravishingly at the Senior Surgeon.
+
+"Wouldn't you two like to go into the consulting-room and talk it over?
+We could settle the business in hand, this time, without your
+assistance, I think."  The voice of the Disagreeable Trustee dripped
+sarcasm.
+
+"I should suggest," said the President, returning to the business of
+the meeting, "that the ward might be continued for the present, until
+we investigate the home condition of the patients and understand
+perhaps a little more thoroughly just what they need, and where they
+can be made most--comfortable."
+
+"And retain Margaret MacLean in charge?"  The Meanest Trustee gave it
+the form of a question, but his manner implied the statement of a
+disagreeable fact.
+
+"Why not?  Is there any one more competent to take charge?"  The
+Executive Trustee interrogated each individual member of the board with
+a quizzical eye.
+
+"But the new surgical ward--and science?"  The Youngest and Prettiest
+threw it, Jason-fashion, and waited expectantly for a clash of steel.
+
+Instead the Senior Surgeon stepped forward, rather pink and
+embarrassed.  "I should like to withdraw my request for a new surgical
+ward.  It can wait--for the present, at least."
+
+And then it was that Margaret MacLean and the House Surgeon entered the
+board-room.
+
+The President nodded to them pleasantly, and motioned to the chairs
+near him.  "We are having what you professional people call a reaction.
+I hardly know what started it; but--hmmm--"  For the second time that
+morning he came to a dead stop.
+
+Everybody took great pains to avoid looking at everybody else; while
+each face wore a painful expression of sham innocence.  It was as if so
+many naughty children had been suddenly caught on the wrong side of the
+fence, the stolen fruit in their pockets.  It was gone in less time
+than it takes for the telling; but it would have left the careful
+observer, had he been there, with the firm conviction that, for the
+first time in their conservative lives, the trustees of Saint
+Margaret's had come perilously near to giving themselves away.
+
+In a twinkling the board sat at ease once more, and the President's
+habitual composure returned.  "Will some one motion that we adopt the
+two measures we have suggested?  This is not parliamentary, but we are
+all in a hurry."
+
+"I motion that we keep the incurables for the present, and that Miss
+MacLean be requested to continue in charge."  There was a note of
+relieved repression in the voice of the Executive Trustee as he made
+the motion; and he stretched his shoulders unconsciously.
+
+"But you mustn't make any such motion."  Margaret MacLean rose,
+reaching forth protesting hands.  "You would spoil the very best thing
+that has happened for years and years.  Just wait--wait until you have
+heard."
+
+As she unfolded her letter the President's alert eye promptly compared
+it with the one behind him on the desk.  "So--you have likewise heard
+from the widow of the Richest Trustee?"
+
+She looked at him, puzzled.  "Oh, you know!  She has written you?"
+
+"Not what she has written you, I judge.  One could hardly term our
+communication 'the best thing that has happened in years.'"  And again
+a smile twitched at the corners of the President's mouth.
+
+"Then listen to this."  Margaret MacLean read the letter eagerly:
+
+
+"DEAE MARGARET MACLEAN,--There is a home standing on a hilltop--an
+hour's ride from the city.  It belongs to a lonely old woman who finds
+that it is too large and too lonely for her to live in, and too full of
+haunting memories to be left empty.  Therefore she wants to fill it
+with incurable children, and she would like to begin with the discarded
+ward of Saint Margaret's."
+
+
+"That's a miserable way to speak of a lot of children," muttered the
+Disagreeable Trustee; but no one paid any attention, and Margaret
+MacLean went on:
+
+
+"There is room now for about twenty beds; and annexes can easily be
+added as fast as the need grows.  This lonely old woman would consider
+it a great kindness if you will take charge; she would also like to
+have you persuade the House Surgeon that it is high time for him to
+become Senior Surgeon, and the new home is the place for him to begin.
+Together we should be able to equip it without delay; so that the
+children could be moved direct from Saint Margaret's.  It is the whim
+of this old woman to call it a 'Home for Curables'--which, of course,
+is only a whim.  Will you come to see me as soon as you can and let us
+talk it over?"
+
+
+Margaret MacLean folded the letter slowly and put it back in its
+envelope.  "You see," she said, the little-girl look spreading over her
+face--"you see, you mustn't take us back again.  I could not possibly
+refuse, even if I wanted to; it is just what the children have longed
+for--and wished for--and--"
+
+"We are not going to give up the ward; she would have to start her home
+with other children."  The Dominant Trustee announced it flatly.
+
+Strangely enough, the faces of his fellow-directors corroborated his
+assertion.  Often the value of a collection drops so persistently in
+the estimate of its possessor that he begins to contemplate exchanging
+it for something more up to date or interesting.  But let a rival
+collector march forth with igniting enthusiasm and proclaim a desire
+for the scorned objects, and that very moment does the possessor
+tighten his grip on them and add a decimal or two to their value.  So
+was it with the trustees of Saint Margaret's.  For the first time in
+their lives they desired the incurable ward and wished to retain it.
+
+"Not only do we intend to keep the children, but there are many
+improvements I shall suggest to the board when there is more time.  I
+should like to insist on a more careful supervision of--curious
+visitors."  And the Oldest Trustee raised her lorgnette and compassed
+the gathering with a look that challenged dispute.
+
+Margaret MacLean's face became unaccountably old and tired.  The vision
+that had seemed so close, so tangible, so ready to be made actual, had
+suddenly retreated beyond her reach, and she was left as empty of heart
+and hand as she had been before.  For a moment her whole figure seemed
+to crumple; and then she shook herself together into a resisting,
+fighting force again.
+
+"You can't keep the children, after this.  Think, think what it means
+to them--a home in the country, on a hilltop, trees and birds and
+flowers all about.  Many of them could wheel themselves out of doors,
+and the others could have hammocks and cots under the trees.  Forget
+for this once that you are trustees, and think what it means to the
+children."
+
+"But can't you understand?" urged the President, "we feel a special
+interest in these children.  They are beginning to belong to us--as you
+do, yourself, for that matter."
+
+The little-girl look came rushing into Margaret MacLean's face,
+flooding it with wistfulness.  "It's a little hard to believe--this
+belonging to anybody.  Yesterday I seemed to be the only person who
+wanted me at all, and I wasn't dreadfully keen about it myself."  Then
+she clapped her hands with the suddenness of an idea.  "After all, it's
+the children who are really most concerned.  Why shouldn't we ask them?
+Of course I know it is very much out of the accustomed order of things,
+but why not try it?  Couldn't we?"
+
+Anxiously she scanned the faces about her.  There was surprise,
+amusement, but no dissent.  The Disagreeable Trustee smiled secretly
+behind his hand; it appealed to his latent sense of humor.
+
+"It would be rather a Balaam and his ass affair, but, as Miss MacLean
+suggests, why not try it?" he asked.
+
+Margaret MacLean did not wait an instant longer.  She turned to the
+House Surgeon.  "Bring Bridget down, quickly."
+
+As he disappeared obediently through the door she faced the trustees,
+as she had faced them once before, on the day previous.  "Bridget will
+know better than any one else what will make the children happiest.
+Now wouldn't it be fun"--and she smiled adorably--"if you should all
+play you were faery godparents, for once in your lifetime, and give
+Bridget her choice, whatever it may be?"
+
+This time the entire board smiled back at her; somehow, in some strange
+way, it had caught a breath of Fancy.  And then--the House Surgeon
+re-entered with Bridget in his arms, looking very scared until she
+spied "Miss Peggie."
+
+The President did the nicest thing, proving himself the good man he
+really was.  He crossed hands with the House Surgeon, thereby making a
+swinging chair for Bridget, and together they held her while Margaret
+MacLean explained:
+
+"It's this way, dear.  Some one has offered you--and all the
+children--a home in the country--a home of your very own.  But the
+trustees of Saint Margaret's hardly want to give you up; they think
+they can take as good care of you--and make you just as happy here."
+
+"But--sure--they'll have to be givin' us up.  Weren't we afther givin'
+a penny to the wee one yondther for the home?" and Bridget pointed a
+commanding finger toward the door.
+
+Everybody looked.  There on the threshold stood the widow of the
+Richest Trustee.
+
+"What do you mean, dear?  How could you have given her a penny?"
+Margaret MacLean asked it in bewilderment.
+
+"'Twas all the doin's o' the primrose ring." And then Bridget shouted
+gaily across to the gray wisp of a woman.  "Ye tell them.  Weren't ye
+afther givin' us the promise of a home?"
+
+"And haven't I come to keep the promise?" she answered, as gaily.  But
+in an instant she sobered as her eyes fell on the open letter on the
+President's desk.  "I am so sorry I wrote it--that is why I have come;
+not that I don't think you deserved it, for you do," and the widow of
+the Richest Trustee looked at them unwaveringly.
+
+If she was conscious of the surprised faces about, she gave no sign for
+others to reckon by.  Instead, she walked the length of the board-room
+to the President's desk and went on speaking hurriedly, as if she
+feared to be interrupted before she had said all she had come to say.
+"I wish I had written in another way, a more helpful way.  Why not add
+your second surgical ward to Saint Margaret's and do all the good work
+you can, as you had planned?  Only let me have these children to start
+a home which shall be a future harbor for all the cases you cannot mend
+with your science and which you ought not to set adrift.  You can send
+me all the convalescing children, too, who need country air and
+building up.  In return for this, and because you deserve to be
+punished--just a little--for yesterday--I shall try my best to take
+with me Margaret MacLean and your House Surgeon."
+
+She laid a hand on both, while she added, softly: "Suppose we three go
+home together and talk things over.  Shall we?"
+
+
+So the "Home for Curables" has come true.  It crests a hilltop, and is
+well worth the penny that Bridget gave for it.  As the children
+specified, there are no "trusters"; and it has all the modern
+improvements, including Margaret MacLean, who is still "Miss Peggie,"
+although she is married to their new Senior Surgeon.
+
+There is one very particular thing about the Home which ought to be
+mentioned.  When the children arrived Toby was on the steps, barking a
+welcome.  No one was surprised; in fact, everybody acted as though he
+belonged there.  Perhaps the surprising thing would have been not
+having the promise kept.  Toby is allowed right of way, everywhere; and
+rumor has it that he often sneaks in at night and sleeps on Peter's
+bed.  But, of course, that is just rumor.
+
+The children are supremely happy; which means that no one is allowed to
+cross the threshold who cannot give the password of a friend.  And you
+might like to know that many of the trustees of Saint Margaret's come
+as often as anybody, and are always welcomed with a shout.  The
+President, in particular, has developed the habit of secreting things
+in his pockets until he comes looking very bulgy.
+
+Margaret MacLean always puts the children to sleep with Sandy's song;
+she said it was written by a famous poet who loved children, and the
+children have never told her the truth about it.  And if it happens, as
+it does once in a great while, that some one is missing in the morning,
+there is no sorrowing for him, or heavy-heartedness.  They miss him, of
+course; but they picture him running, sturdy-limbed, up the slope to
+the leprechaun's tree, with Michael waiting for him not far off.
+
+To the children Tir-na-n'Og is the waiting-place for all child-souls
+until Saint Anthony is ready to gather them up and carry them away with
+him to the "Blessed Mother"; and Margaret MacLean, having nothing
+better to tell them, keeps silent.  But she has thought of the nicest
+custom: A new picture is hung in the Home after a child has gone.  It
+bears his name; and it is always something that he liked--birds or
+flowers or ships or some one from a story.  Peter has his chosen
+already; it is to be--a dog.
+
+Whenever Saint Margaret's Senior Surgeon finds a hip or a heart or a
+back that he can do nothing for, he sends it to the Home; and he always
+writes the same thing:
+
+"Here is another case in a thousand for you, Margaret MacLean.  How
+many are there now?"
+
+He has married the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee, as the Disagreeable
+Trustee prophesied, and gossip says that they are very happy.  This
+much I know--there are two more words which he now writes with
+capitals--Son and Sympathy.
+
+Margaret MacLean often says with the Danish faery-man: "My life, too,
+is a faery-tale written by God's finger."  And the House Surgeon always
+chuckles at this, and adds:
+
+"Praise Heaven!  He wrote me into it."
+
+As for the widow of the Richest Trustee, she has found a greater
+measure of contentment than she thought the world could hold--with love
+to brim it; for Margaret MacLean has adopted her along with the
+children.  The children still regard her, however, as a very mysterious
+person; and she has taken the place of Susan's mythical aunt in the
+ward conversation.  It has never been argued out to the complete
+satisfaction of every one whether she is really the faery queen or just
+the "Wee Gray Woman," as Sandy calls her.  The arguments wax hot at
+times, and it is Bridget who generally has to put in the final
+silencing word:
+
+"Faith, she kept her promise, didn't she?  and everything come thrue,
+hasn't it?  Well, what more do ye want?"
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRIMROSE RING***
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