Gerda paused for a moment, and with face full towards the sea muttered her wish with moving lips; then turning to the tree, she carefully counted the third bough from the bottom, and the third twig on the bough. Breaking off her due portion, she twisted it round three times, and holding it between the third fingers of either hand, dropped it into the water, while she rapidly repeated the magic formula:
"Perran, Perran of the well,
What I've wished I may not tell,
'Tis but known to me and you,
Help me then to bring it true".
The girls watched rather half-heartedly. They were growing a little tired of the performance. They fully expected the ninth stick to drift the same way as its predecessors, but to everybody's astonishment it made one rapid circle of the basin, and bobbed successfully through the gap.
"It's gone! it's gone!" cried Betty Scott in wild excitement. "St. Perran's working after all. Oh, why didn't he do it for me?"
"How funny it should be the only one!" said Elyned Hughes.
"I believe the water's running faster than it did before," commented Romola Harvey. "Has the old saint turned on the tap?"
"Shall I get my wish?" said Gerda, who stood by with shining eyes.
"Of course you'll get it—certain sure. And jolly fortunate you are too. You've won the luck of the whole Form. Don't I wish I were you, just!"
"You're evidently St. Perran's favourite!" laughed Annie Pridwell.
"Come along, it's nearly time for call-over. We'll be late if we don't sprint," said Barbara Marshall, consulting her watch, and starting at a run on the path that led back to the Dower House.