Abby talked to the girls a while, and then went home to exhibit her purchase.  Her mother commented approvingly upon it; and the little girl ran down to the kitchen to show it to Delia the cook, who had lived with the family ever since Larry was a baby.

Delia was loud in her admiration.

“Oh, on this day they do have great doings in Ireland!” said she; “but nowadays, to be sure, it’s nothing to what it was in old times.  It was on May eve, I’ve heard tell, that St. Patrick lit the holy fire at Tara, in spite of the ancient pagan laws.  And in the days when the country was known as the island of saints and of scholars, sure throughout the length and breadth of the land the monastery bells rang in the May with praises of the Holy Mother; and the canticles in her honor were as ceaseless as the song of the birds.  And ’twas the fairies that were said to have great power at this season—­”

“Delia, you know very well there are no fairies,” interrupted Abby.

“Well, some foolish folk thought there were, anyhow,” answered Delia.  “And in Maytide the children and cattle, the milk and the butter, were kept guarded from them.  Many and many an evening I’ve listened to my mother that’s dead and gone—­God rest her soul!—­telling of an old woman that, at the time of the blooming of the hawthorn, always put a spent coal under the churn, and another beneath the grandchild’s cradle, because that was said to drive the fairies away; and how primroses used to be scattered at the door of the house to prevent the fairies from stealing in, because they could not pass that flower.  But you don’t hear much of that any more; for the priest said ’twas superstition, and down from the heathenish times.  So the old people came to see ’twas wrong to use such charms, and the young people laughed at the old women’s tales.  Now on May Day the shrines in the churches are bright with flowers, of course.  And as for the innocent merrymakings, instead of a dance round the May or hawthorn bush, as in the olden times, in some places there’s just perhaps a frolic on the village green, when the boys and girls come home from the hills and dales with their garlands of spring blossoms—­not paper flowers like those,” added Delia, with a contemptuous glance at Abby’s wreath, forgetting how much she had admired it only a few moments before.

Somehow it did not now seem so beautiful to Abby either.  She took it off, and gazed at it with a sigh.

“Here in New England the boys and girls go a-Maying,” she said.  “Last year, when we were in the country, Larry and I went with our cousins.  We had such fun hanging May-baskets!  I got nine.  But,” she went on, regretfully, “I don’t expect any this year; for city children do not have those plays.”

She went upstairs to the sitting-room, where Larry was rigging his boat anew.  He had been to the pond, but the wind wrought such havoc with the little craft that he had to put into port for repairs.