“Lovely,” agreed Gloria. “Here is my cup. Let’s try the spring water.”
“It will fetch you a fairy prince if you wish with the first drop that touches your lips,” assured Trixy. “But don’t wish for him to happen along just now. I’d like to make a favorable impression, even if he is your prince, and my hair must be rather skew-gee. I can feel it tickle my very ear drums. But say, Glo, you mustn’t use a cup at the Spring. The fairies loathe cups. Just put your pretty red lips—”
Gloria was down over the little boxed-in spring, her face buried in the basin. On the other side of the stone wall that surrounded the bubbling spring were groups of willows that hid the open spaces wending into a pine grove. It was indeed an elfin wood, but as Gloria started to chant something about fairy princes, meanwhile swaying up and down like Egyptians at prayer, something splashed into the tiny pool. She started up and was on her feet instantly.
“A stone!” she exclaimed. “Where can it have come from?”
“Look out!” warned Trixy, just in time, for another stone whizzed through the branches and dropped almost at Gloria’s feet.
“Robbers! Thieves! Stealers!” came the shout from somewhere not very far away, and while Gloria recognized the voices of her tormentors of the morning, she felt a sickening sensation, as if she were being persecuted by a secret foe.
“Trixy,” she gasped, “let’s hurry back to the car. I—can’t stand the taunts—of those children.”
“After they have answered to me,” declared Trixy, hotly. “Then we will go back. But first I am going to shake them into human beings,” she cried, already running through the brush in the direction the stones had come from. “They act like savages,” she called as she ran. “Hey, there! You young Gormans,” she shouted. “I know you. You needn’t run! I can catch you!” and as she sped on after the fleeing youngsters, Gloria dropped to a little knoll of grass and sat there disconsolately.
“Thieves and robbers!” she repeated mechanically. “What ever can they mean?”