They were no longer alone; hosts of Little People passed them, going in the same direction. Peter said most of them rode "straddle-legs" on night birds or moths, while some flew along on a funny thing that was horse before and weeds behind. I judge this must have been the buchailin buidhe or benweed, which the faeries bewitch and ride the same as a witch mounts her broomstick.
And everybody who passed always called out in the friendliest way, "Hello, Peter!" or "Hello, Bridget!" or "The luck rise with ye!" which is the most common of all greetings in Tir-na-n'Og.
"Gee!" was Peter's habitual comment after the telling, "maybe it wasn't swell havin' 'em know us—names an' all. Betcher life we wasn't cases to them—no, siree!"
It was Susan who remembered best how everything looked—Susan, who had never been to the country in all her starved little life—that is, if one excepts the times Margaret MacLean had taken her on the Ward C "special." She told so well how all the trees and flowers were fashioned that it was an easy matter putting names to them.
In the center of Tir-na-n'Og towered a great hill; but instead of its being capped with peak or rocks it was gently hollowed at the top, as though in the beginning, when it was thrown up molten from the depths of somewhere, a giant thumb had pressed it down and smoothed it round and even. All about the brim of it grew hawthorns and rowans and hazel-trees. In the grass, everywhere, were thousands and millions of primroses, heart's-ease, and morning-glories; all crowded together, so Susan said, like the patterns on the Persian carpet in the board-room. It was all so beautiful and faeryish and heart-desired that "yer'd have said it wasn't real if yer hadn't ha' knowed it was."
The children stood on the brink of the giant hollow and clapped their hands for the very joy of seeing it all; and there—a little man stepped up to them and doffed his cap. The queen wanted them—she was waiting for them by the throne that very minute; and the little man was to bring them to her.
Now that throne—according to Susan—was nothing like the thrones one finds in stories or Journeys through palaces to see. It was not cold, hard, or forbidding; instead, it was as soft and green and pillowy as an inflated golf-bunker might be, and just high and comfortable enough for the baby faeries to discover it and go to sleep there whenever they felt tired. The throne was full of them when the children looked, and some one was tumbling them off like so many kittens.
"That is the queen," said the little man, pointing.
The children stood on tiptoes and craned their necks the better to see; but it was not until they had come quite close that they saw that her dress was gray, and her hair was gray, and she was small, and her face was like—
"Bless me if it ain't!" shouted Susan in amazement. "It's Sandy's wee creepity woman!"