The little McSwiggins squealed and gurgled with delight, and then ate as only people can who have seen the gaunt wolf of starvation at the door, and as they ate they asked the question unceasingly:
"Who sent it?"
"They's a letter tied to her horn," volunteered Johnny McSwiggins after he had devoured two cookies and three sandwiches and a chicken leg. "I seen it."
They found it under the roses, and when they opened it, there dropped out two yellow-backed bills (from the Judge and the Captain), and a note (and that was from Judy), and the note said:
"I waved my wand and commanded that Sweetheart be brought back to you. Also these other gifts. If you wish to keep them, and to keep my favor, you must never ask whence they came.
"Your guardian fairy,
"JUANNLOT."
Then all the little McSwiggins stared, and the littlest McSwiggins—except the baby, asked, "Was it really a fairy, mother?" and Mrs. McSwiggins wiped her eyes and sobbed, "I reckon it was, honey," but Mary McSwiggins with her eyes shining as they had never shone before in her sad little life said softly to her mother, "I'll bet it was them girls and that Bart boy. I'll bet it was—"
"What girls?" asked Mrs. McSwiggins.
"Them girls down at the Judge's in the big house. They wears white dresses, and one's got yaller hair and the other's got brown, and I was behin' the fence yustiddy when they was pickin' flowers, and that's how I foun' out they names—the dark one's Judy, and the light one's Anne—and the boy's named Launcelot. And that's how they got that fairy name—you look here," and she held up the note to her mother, "'Ju—ann—lot'—it's jes' them names strung together."
"Well, now," said Mrs. McSwiggins, "if that ain' bright, honey. But I don't know's we ought to take all them things."