Suddenly she looked curiously at her sister. “Barbara, you are thinking of something!” she exclaimed. “Have you any nameable idea?”
“No,” said Barbara, quickly; “it isn’t nameable.”
“All right; you never would talk when you didn’t want to,” complained Mollie. “And I know you want that money back as badly as I do. Tell you what—I’ll say the fairies’ charm. Don’t you remember the one the old gypsy woman taught us? Wish she were here to say it for us! She promised to do all sorts of things for me when I found her in the field with a sprained ankle and helped her back to camp. Why! why! Barbara, this is uncanny—she’s coming now!”
In truth, down the road a queer little bent figure was seen approaching. “I know her,” continued Mollie eagerly, “by that funny combination of red and yellow handkerchiefs she wears on her head. Do let’s go and meet her and tell her—it can’t do any harm.”
“What nonsense, Mollie!” laughed Barbara. But she followed her younger sister, who had already started down the road toward the quaint, little, gaudily-turbaned dame.
Between them, the girls brought her into the yard, Mollie meanwhile busily explaining their predicament. “You’ll help us, won’t you, Granny Ann?” she coaxed childishly. “You said, that time that I helped you home, you’d always be near when I wanted you.”
Granny Ann sat on the garden seat, looking gravely down at the half-laughing, half-serious girls huddled at her feet.
“I knowed,” she began in a high, cracked voice, “I knowed my little fair one,” lightly touching Mollie’s curls, “would need me to-day. Far away I was, when I heard the shadow of her voice callin’ out to me—and miles I have traveled to reach her. Granny Ann is thirsty, and she has had no food since morning.” The old woman looked reproachfully at her listeners.
Barbara’s eyes twinkled at Mollie’s rather crestfallen face, when the sybil voiced this most human request. But she said cheerily: “All right, Granny; supper isn’t ready yet, but I know mother’ll have something.” Then Barbara hurried into the house, the gypsy dame waiting solemnly until she reappeared, a moment later, with sandwiches, doughnuts and a big glass of milk.
Granny Ann smiled, but she didn’t speak until the lunch had quite disappeared. Then the old woman rose impressively. “There’s one sure magic for fetching back money that has gone,” she declaimed. “Because you have been good to me, ‘Little Fair One,’ you and your sister, I will say the golden spell for you.” With her hands crossed, Granny Ann began to croon dreamily: