The girls listened in perfect amazement, for Peggy, as she warmed to her work, really had a sort of witchery about her. She forgot her audience, she was first the Ferryman, she was then the little people, she was everything she described; her voice rose and fell, her eyes danced, her voice danced to the music of her thoughts. Now and then she stopped to laugh, and her laugh was uncanny. At last her trial was over. There was a dead silence in the room, no words were allowed to be said; but when she sat down again, and the other girls followed suit, it seemed, both to Miss Greene and to the girls themselves, that all the other verses wanted in tone, in flash, in spirit, compared with the magnificent rendering of the “Fairies’ Passage.” Miss Greene afterwards went away to Mrs. Fleming.
“Well, my dear,” said that good lady, “you have heard the recitations?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Fleming looked at her. “Have you anything to say?”
“Well, of course,” said Miss Greene, “there’s no doubt whatever. The girls have chosen with care, and they will do their work admirably; but Peggy——”
“Yes, what of Peggy?”
“Peggy ought to go on the stage some day; and yet, do I want such a life for her? She is wonderful. I won’t tell you anything about what she is going to recite. I never heard the verses myself before; rendered by Peggy, I can only tell you that they take one’s breath away. They have a slight resemblance to Browning’s ‘Pied Piper’; I almost think that Browning must have read them and copied the style, for they are, of course, much older. I asked the child afterwards, and she said that her ‘gaffer,’ as she used to call old O’Flynn, often said them to her on a winter evening, when the ‘little people,’ as she expressed it, were about. I asked her then if she believed in the little people, and she said, ‘Of course I do.’ Really, that child—there’s something magical about her.”
“She is very, very lovable,” said Mrs. Fleming. “But, all the same, my dear kind friend, I would much rather she did not get the miniature.”
“She will get it as far as the recitation is concerned.”
“There are so many other things to be considered,” said Mrs. Fleming.