Margaret MacLean, grown, could look back at tiny Margaret MacLean and see her very clearly as she straightened up in the little iron crib and answered in a shrill, tense voice:  “I’m not Thumbkin.  I’m a foundling.  I don’t belong to anybody.  I never had any father or mother or nothing, but just a hurt back; they said so.  They stood right there—­two of them; and one told the other all about me.”

This was the end of the story, and the beginning of Trustee Days for Margaret MacLean.

She soon made the discovery that she was not the only child in the ward who felt about it that way.  Her discovery was a matter of intuition rather than knowledge; for—­as if by silent consent—­the topic was carefully avoided in the usual ward conversation.  One does not make it a rule to talk about the hobgoblins that lurk in the halls at night, or the gray, creeping shapes that come out of dark corners and closets after one has gone to bed, if one is so pitifully unfortunate as to possess these things in childhood.  Instead one just remembers and waits, shivering.  Only to old Cassie, the scrub-woman, who was young Cassie then, did she confide her fear.  From her she received a charm—­compounded of goose eggshells and vinegar—­which Cassie claimed to be what they used in Ireland to unbewitch changelings.  She kept the charm hidden for months under her pillow.  It proved comforting, although absolutely ineffectual.

And for months there had been a strained relationship between the Old Senior Surgeon and herself, causing them both much embarrassment.  She resented the story he had made for her with all her child soul; he had cheated her—­fooled her.  She felt much as we felt toward our parents when we made our first discovery concerning Santa Claus.

But after a time—­a long time—­the story came to belong to her again; she grew to realize that the Old Senior Surgeon had told it truthfully—­only with the unconscious tongue of the poet instead of the grim realist.  She found out as well that it had done a wonderful thing for her:  it had turned life into an adventure—­a quest upon which one was bound to depart, no matter how poorly one’s feet might be shod or how persistently the rain and wind bit at one’s marrow through the rags of a conventional cloak.  More than this—­it had colored the road ahead for her, promising pleasant comradeship and good cheer; it would keep her from ever losing heart or turning back.

A day came at last when she and the Old Senior Surgeon could laugh—­a little foolishly, perhaps—­over the child-story; and then, just because they could laugh at it and feel happy, they told it together all over again.  They made much of Thumbkin’s christening feast, and the gifts the good godmothers brought.

“Let me see,” said the Old Senior Surgeon, cocking his head thoughtfully, “there was the business-like little party on a broomstick, carrying grit—­plain grit.”