"Good-by!" shouted the children. "Don't forget us, Michael."
"Nyet; goo'-by," Michael shouted back; and then he laughed. "You tell
Mi' Peggie—I say—Go' blees you!"
And this was Michael's patch.
The ferryman stood in the stem and swung his great oar. Slowly the boat moved, scrunching over the white pebbles, and slipped into the water. The children saw Michael and the queen waving their hands until they had dwindled to shadow-specks in the distance; they watched the wake of starshine lengthen out behind them; they listened to the ripples lapping at the keel. To and fro, to and fro, swayed the ferryman to the swing of his oar. "Sleep—sleep—sleep," sang the river, running with them. Bridget stretched her arms about as many children as she could compass and held them close while eight pairs of eyes slowly—slowly—shut.
VIII
IN WHICH A PART OF THE BOARD HAS DISTURBING DREAMS
It is a far cry from a primrose ring to a disbanded board meeting; but Fancy bridged it in a twinkling and without an effort. She blew the trustees off the door-step of Saint Margaret's, homeward, with an insistent buzzing of "ifs" and "buts" in their ears, and the faint woodsy odor of primroses under their noses.
To each member of the board entering his own home, unsupported by the presence of his fellow-members and the scientific zeal of the Senior Surgeon, the business of the afternoon began to change its aspect. For some unaccountable reason—unless we take Fancy into the reckoning—this sudden abandoning of Ward C did not seem the simple matter of an hour previous; while in perspective even Margaret MacLean's outspokenness became less heinous and more human.
As they settled themselves for the evening, each quietly and alone after his or her particular fashion of comfort, the "ifs" and "buts" were still buzzing riotously; while the primroses, although forgotten, clung persistently to the frills or coat lapels where the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee had put them. There it was that Fancy slipped unnoticed over the threshold of library, den, and boudoir in turn; and with a glint of mischief in her eyes she set the stage in each place to her own liking, while she summoned whatever players she chose to do her bidding.
Now the trustees were very different from the children in the matter of telling what they remembered of that May Eve. Of course they were hampered with all the self-consciousness and skepticism of grown-ups, which would make them quite unwilling to own up to anything strange or out of the conventional path, not in a hundred years. Therefore I am forced to leave their part of the telling to Fancy, and you may believe or discredit as much or as little as you choose; only I am hoping that by this time you have acquired at least a sprinkling of fern-seed in your eyes. You may have forgotten that fern-seed is the most subtle of eye-openers known to Fancy; and that it enables you to see the things that have existed only in your imagination. It is very scarce nowadays, and hard to find, for the bird-fanciers no longer keep it—and the nursery-gardeners have forgotten how to grow it. In the light of what happened afterward, I think you will agree that Fancy has not been far wrong concerning the trustees; she has a way of putting things a little differently, that is all.