“But can’t you understand?” urged the President, “we feel a special interest in these children.  They are beginning to belong to us—­as you do, yourself, for that matter.”

The little-girl look came rushing into Margaret MacLean’s face, flooding it with wistfulness.  “It’s a little hard to believe—­this belonging to anybody.  Yesterday I seemed to be the only person who wanted me at all, and I wasn’t dreadfully keen about it myself.”  Then she clapped her hands with the suddenness of an idea.  “After all, it’s the children who are really most concerned.  Why shouldn’t we ask them?  Of course I know it is very much out of the accustomed order of things, but why not try it?  Couldn’t we?”

Anxiously she scanned the faces about her.  There was surprise, amusement, but no dissent.  The Disagreeable Trustee smiled secretly behind his hand; it appealed to his latent sense of humor.

“It would be rather a Balaam and his ass affair, but, as Miss MacLean suggests, why not try it?” he asked.

Margaret MacLean did not wait an instant longer.  She turned to the House Surgeon.  “Bring Bridget down, quickly.”

As he disappeared obediently through the door she faced the trustees, as she had faced them once before, on the day previous.  “Bridget will know better than any one else what will make the children happiest.  Now wouldn’t it be fun”—­and she smiled adorably—­“if you should all play you were faery godparents, for once in your lifetime, and give Bridget her choice, whatever it may be?”

This time the entire board smiled back at her; somehow, in some strange way, it had caught a breath of Fancy.  And then—­the House Surgeon re-entered with Bridget in his arms, looking very scared until she spied “Miss Peggie.”

The President did the nicest thing, proving himself the good man he really was.  He crossed hands with the House Surgeon, thereby making a swinging chair for Bridget, and together they held her while Margaret MacLean explained: 

“It’s this way, dear.  Some one has offered you—­and all the children—­a home in the country—­a home of your very own.  But the trustees of Saint Margaret’s hardly want to give you up; they think they can take as good care of you—­and make you just as happy here.”

“But—­sure—­they’ll have to be givin’ us up.  Weren’t we afther givin’ a penny to the wee one yondther for the home?” and Bridget pointed a commanding finger toward the door.

Everybody looked.  There on the threshold stood the widow of the Richest Trustee.

“What do you mean, dear?  How could you have given her a penny?” Margaret MacLean asked it in bewilderment.

“‘Twas all the doin’s o’ the primrose ring.”  And then Bridget shouted gaily across to the gray wisp of a woman.  “Ye tell them.  Weren’t ye afther givin’ us the promise of a home?”

“And haven’t I come to keep the promise?” she answered, as gaily.  But in an instant she sobered as her eyes fell on the open letter on the President’s desk.  “I am so sorry I wrote it—­that is why I have come; not that I don’t think you deserved it, for you do,” and the widow of the Richest Trustee looked at them unwaveringly.