"No, but that's weally my guinea-pig, the pink one—Billy O'Flynn. You're not a fairy, Billy?"
"Why, what does you know about fairies?"
"Most truthfully, you know? I don't believe in fairies, but then it pleases mummie."
So Billy sat on his heel making friends with the heaven-born, and Patsy, the nurse, came behind him, craving with cotton-gloved hands to touch the sailor's crisp, short, golden hair, and David gravely tried on the man's peaked cap.
"Yes," Billy agreed, "fairies is rot when there's real gals about, with rosy cheeks a-blushin' an' cotton gloves."
"Lawks! 'Ow you sailors does fancy yourselves," said Patsy, her shy fingers drawn by that magnetic gold of the man's hair.
"Climb on my back and ride," said young O'Flynn to David, "I'll be a fairy horse."
"The cheek of 'im!" jeered Patsy, "fairy 'orse indeed!"
Oh, surely the fairies were very busy about them, tugging at heartstrings, while Billy and Patsy fell head over ears in love, and my pet cupid had them both for slaves. David rode Billy home, by his august command straight into my brown study, where I sat in my lazy chair.
Was it my voice telling baby to go and get dry feet? Was it my hand grasping Billy's horny paw? For I heard my roaring cañon, saw my cliffs, my embattled sculptured cliffs, and once more seemed to walk with Jesse in Cathedral Grove. I could hear my dear man, speaking across the years, "Say, youngster, when you sawed off that table leg to make your mother's limb, what did you do with the caster?"