"Then there are more?" asked the curate, wondering whither the child's strange fancy was leading her.
"Of torse there is. I had a picture of them. Don't you know the twelve Pottles, Daddy Merle?" She opened her blue eyes in pained surprise at the woeful ignorance of this otherwise perfect old gentleman.
Then a great light burst upon Horatio Merle. "Why, to be sure, my dear! Of course I know the twelve apos—I should say Pottles. I have known the twelve Pottles ever since I can remember, my child. Dear me! dear me!" His face fairly beamed with pleasure at this lucky intuition. The curate's happiness at having reinstated himself in the estimation of his little friend was only equaled by An Petronia's joy at the recovery of her so nearly lost ideal.
"I just knew you knew, Daddy Merle!" she cried, and pressed her little palms together in an ecstasy of childish delight.
"But aren't you afraid they'll catch cold?" said the curate presently, in a tone of proper concern, as An Petronia was returning the headless John to his place beside Matthew, Mark, and Luke, who still sat stoically with their feet in the water.
She shook her head gravely, almost reprovingly. "Oh, no! The Pottles is having their feet washed. They tan't tach told." Then, after a moment of pondering: "Would you like to see the picture, Daddy Merle?"
Before he could answer she had jumped up and disappeared behind the great beech tree. She had only been gone a moment when out of the stillness came a small voice: "Tum and see my little house, Daddy Merle!" It was the voice of An Petronia, but strangely muffled and far away.
Full of curiosity, Merle scrambled to his feet and peered round the tree. An Petronia was nowhere to be seen. What had become of her? Another step and the mystery was explained.
Between two of the buttresslike roots on the other side of the ancient beech was a dark fissure extending from the ground upward for three or four feet and just wide enough to form a doorway for little An Petronia. A practical woodman viewing the hollow tree that An Petronia called her "little house" would have had no thought beyond the loss of so many cubic feet of good timber and whether the tree was worth chopping down. To the gentle curate waiting in the green silence, here was a magic door through which at any moment might issue a laughing faun or a wistful dryad. As for Brother Beech, after all the only one vitally concerned, there was no tree specialist to tell him (for a substantial consideration) that he had only a very few years more to live and must avoid strong sunshine as much as possible and give up rain in excess, and above all be careful not to expose himself unnecessarily to the September blasts. And so the reckless little leaves in their gold-green finery laughed and sang and danced and feasted summer after summer just as if they were going to live forever and there were no such things as September gales.
From the inside of the tree came small, whispery, squirrel-like noises, and presently through the moss-rimmed opening stretched the hand of An Petronia, holding out a faded green, oblong package, bulging with papers and tied with white tape.