"The incurable ward and Margaret MacLean have really been a terrible responsibility, haven't they? I can't help feeling it will mean quite a load off our minds." It was the Social Trustee who spoke, and she followed it with a little sigh of relief.
The sigh was echoed twice—thrice—about the room. Then the Meanest
Trustee barked out:
"I hope it will mean a load off our purses. That ward and that nurse have always wanted things, and had them, that they had no business wanting. I hope we can save a substantial sum now for the endowment fund."
The Oldest Trustee smiled tolerantly. "Of course it isn't as if the cases were not hopeless. I can see no object, however, in making concessions and sacrifices to keep in the hospital cases that cannot be cured; and, no doubt, we can place them most satisfactorily in state institutions for orphans or deficients."
At that moment the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee spied the primroses on the President's desk—she had been too engrossed in the surgical profession to observe much apart. "I believe I'm going to decorate you." And she dimpled up at the Senior Surgeon, coquettishly. Selecting one of the blossoms with great care, she drew it through the buttonhole in his lapel. "See, I'm decorating you with the Order of the Golden Primrose—for brilliancy." Whereupon she dropped her eyes becomingly.
"Good Lord!" muttered the Disagreeable Trustee to the President, his eye focused on the two. "She'll fetch him this time. And she'll have him so hypnotized with all this chirping and dancing business that he'll be perfectly helpless in a month, or I miss—"
The Youngest and Prettiest Trustee looked up just in time to intercept that eye, and she attacked it with a saucy little stare. "I believe you are both jealous," she flung over her shoulder. But the very next moment she was dimpling again. "I believe I am going to decorate everybody—including myself. I'm sure we all deserve it for our loyal support of Science." She, likewise, always spelled it with a capital, having acquired the habit from the Senior Surgeon.
She snatched a cluster of primroses from the green Devonshire bowl; and one was fastened securely in the lapel or frill of every trustee, not even omitting the gray wisp of a woman by the door.
And so it came to pass that every member of the board of Saint Margaret's Free Hospital for Children went home on May Eve with one of the faeries' own flowers tucked somewhere about his or her person. Moreover, they went home at precisely three minutes and twenty-two seconds past seven by the clock on the tower—the astronomical time for the sun to go down on the 30th of April. Crack went all the combination locks on all the faery raths, spilling the Little People over all the world; and creak went the gates of Tir-na-n'Og, swinging wide open for wandering mortals to come back.
As the trustees left the hospital the Senior Surgeon turned into the cross-corridor for his case, still gay with his Order of the Golden Primrose; and there, at the foot of the stairs, he ran into Margaret MacLean. They faced each other for the merest fraction of a breath, both conscious and embarrassed; then she glimpsed the flower in his coat and a cry of surprise escaped her.