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Page 3
"Morning, Patsy."
He was "Patrick" to the rest of Saint Margaret's; no one else seemed to
realize that he was only about one-fifth uniform and the other fifths
were boy--small boy at that.
She eyed his work critically. "That's right--polish them well, Patsy.
They must shine especially bright to-day."
"Why, what's happenin' to-day?"
"Oh--everything, and--nothing at all."
And she passed on through the door with a most mysterious smile,
thereby causing Patsy to mentally comment:
"My, don't she beat all! More'n half the time a feller don't know what
she's kiddin' about; but, gee! don't he like it!"
As it happened the primroses did not get as far as Ward C then.
Margaret MacLean found the door of the board-room ajar, and, glancing
in, looked square into the eyes of the Founder of Saint Margaret's,
where he hung in his great gold frame--silent and questioning.
"If all the tales they tell about you are true, you must wonder what
has happened to Saint Margaret's since you turned it over to a board of
trustees."
She went in and stood close to him, smiling wistfully. "Perhaps you
would like me to leave you the primroses until after the meeting--they
would be sure to cheer you up; and they might--they might--" Laughing,
she went over to the President's desk and put the flowers in the green
Devonshire bowl.
She was sitting in the President's chair, coaxing some of the hoydenish
blossoms into place, when the House Surgeon looked in a moment later.
"Hello! What are you doing? I thought you detested this room." He
spoke in a teasing, big-brother way, while his eyes dwelt pleasurably
on the small gray figure in the President's chair. For, be it said
without partiality or prejudice, Margaret MacLean was beautiful, with a
beauty altogether free from self-appraisement.
"I do--I hate it!" Then she wagged her head and raised a significant
finger in perfect imitation of the flower-seller. "I am dabbling
in--magic. I am starting here a terrible and insidious campaign
against gloom."
The House Surgeon looked amused. "You make me shiver, all right; but I
haven't the smallest guess coming. Would you mind putting it into
scientific American?"
"I'm afraid I couldn't. But I can make a plain statement in
prose--this is Trustee Day."
"Hell!" The House Surgeon walked over to the calendar on the desk to
verify the fact. "Well, what are you going to do about it?"
Margaret MacLean spread her hands over the primroses, indicatively. "I
told you--magic." She wrinkled up her forehead into a worrisome frown.
"Let me see; I counted them, up last night, and I have had two hundred
and twenty-eight Trustee Days in my life. I have tried about
everything else--philosophy, Christianity, optimism, mental sclerosis,
and missionary fever; but never magic. Don't you think it
sounds--hopeful?"
The House Surgeon laughed. "You are the funniest little person I ever
knew. On duty you're as old as Methuselah and as wise as Hippocrates,
but the rest of the time I believe your feet are eternally treading the
nap off antique wishing-carpets. I wonder how many you've worn out.
As for that head of yours, it bobs like a penny balloon among the
clouds looking for--"
"Faeries?" suggested Margaret MacLean.
"That just about hits it. Will you please tell me how you, of all
people, ever evolved these--ideas--out of Saint Margaret's?"
A grim smile tightened the corners of her mouth while she looked across
the room to the portrait that hung opposite the Founder's--the portrait
of the Old Senior Surgeon. "I had to," she said at last. "When a
person is born with absolutely nothing--nothing of the human things a
human baby is entitled to--she has to evolve something to live in; a
sort of sea-urchin affair with spines of make-believe sticking out all
over it to keep prodding away life as it really is. If she didn't the
things she had missed would flatten her out into a flabby pulp--just
skin and feelings."
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