“How are you going to keep it?” she asked.

He hoicked a bit of his shirt-tail from his breeches and proceeded to knot the cornelian heart secure therein.  Maisie fled rapidly on the verge of hysterics, After that the school treat had but one meaning for Paul.  He fed, it is true, in Pantagruelian fashion on luscious viands, transcending his imagination of those which lay behind Blinks the confectioner’s window in Bludston:  there he succumbed to the animal; but the sports, the swing-boats, the merry-go-round, offered no temptation.  He hovered around Maisie Shepherd like a little dog-quite content to keep her in sight.  And every two or three minutes he fumbled about his breeches to see that the knotted treasure was safe.

The day sank into late afternoon.  The children had been fed.  The weary elders had their tea.  The vicarage party took a few moments’ rest in the shade of a clump of firs some distance away from the marquee.  Behind the screen lay Paul, his eyes on his goddess, his heels in the air, a buttercup-stalk between his teeth.  He felt the comforting knot beneath his thigh.  For the first time, perhaps, in his life, he knew utter happiness.  He heard the talk, but did not listen.  Suddenly, however, the sound of his own name caused him to prick his ears.  Paul Kegworthy!  They were talking about him.  There could be no mistake.  He slithered a foot or two nearer.

“No matter whether his people are drunkards or murderers,” said the beloved voice, “he is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in ’ my life.  Have you ever spoken to him, Winifred?”

“No,” said the vicar’s daughter.  “Of course I’ve noticed him.  Every one does-he is remarkable.”

“I don’t believe he’s a child of these people at all,” Maisie declared.  “He’s of a different clay.  He’s as sensitive as-as a sensitive plant.  You ought to keep your eye on him, Mr. Merewether.  I believe he’s a poor little prince in a fairy tale.”

“A freak—­a lusus naturae” said the vicar.

Paul did not know what a lusus naturae was, but it sounded mighty grand.

“He’s a fairy prince, and one day he’ll come into his kingdom.”

“My dear, if you saw his mother!”

“But I’m sure no one but a princess could be Paul Kegworthy’s mother,” laughed Maisie.

“And his father?”

“A prince too!”

And Paul listened and drank in his goddess’s words greedily.  Truth clear as crystal fell from her lips.  A wild wonder racked his little soul.  She had said that his mother was not his mother, and that his father was a prince.  The tidings capped the glory of an effulgent day.