The Primrose Ring | Page 4

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."
"And so you make believe that Trustee Day isn't really bad?"
"Oh dear, no! But I keep believing it's going to be much better. Did you
ever think what it could be like--if the trustees would only make it
something more than--a matter of business? Why, it could be as good
as any faery-tale come true, with a dozen god-parents instead of one;
and think of the wonderful things they could do it they tried.
Think--think--and, oh, the fun of it!"
She broke off with a little shivering ache. When the picture became so
alive that it pulled at one's heart-strings, it was time to stop. But the
next moment she was laughing merrily.
"Do you know, when I was a little tad and couldn't sleep at night with
the pain, I used to make believe I was a 'truster' and say over to myself
all the nice, comforting things I wished they would say. It began to
sound so real that one day I answered--just as if some one had said
something pleasant."
"Well?" interrogated the House Surgeon, much amused.
"Well, it was the Oldest Trustee, of course; and she raised those
lorgnettes and reminded me that a good child never spoke unless she
was spoken to. I suppose it will take lots and lots of magic to turn them
into god-parents."
"Look here," and the House Surgeon reached across the desk and took a
firm, big-brother grip of her hands, "faery-tales have to have
stepmothers as well as godmothers--think of it that way. And remember
that those kiddies of yours were never born to ride in pumpkin
coaches."
"But I'm not reaching out for faery luxuries for them. I want them to be
children--plain, happy, laughing children--with as normal a heritage as
we can scrape together for them. All it needs is the magic of a little
human understanding. That's the most potent magic in the whole world.
Why, it can do anything!"
A little-girl look came into Margaret MacLean's face. It always did
when she was wanting anything very much or was thinking about
something very intensely. It was the hardest kind of a look to resist.
She had often threshed this subject out with the House Surgeon before;
for it was her theory that when a body's material condition was rather

poor and meager there was all the more reason for scraping together
what one could of a spiritual heritage and living thereby.
"And don't you see," she had urged, at least a score of times, "if we
could only teach all the cripples to let their minds
run--free-limbed--over hilltops and pleasant places, their natures would
never need to warp and wither after the fashion of their poor bodies.
And the time to begin is in childhood, when the mind is learning to
walk alone."
Usually the House Surgeon was easily convinced to the Margaret
MacLean side of any argument; but this time, for reasons of his own,
he turned an unsympathetic and stubborn ear. He was coming to
believe very strongly that all this fanciful optimism was so much
laughing-gas, with only a passing power, and when the effect wore off
there would be the Dickens to pay. He did not want to see Margaret
MacLean turn into a bitter-minded woman of the world--stripped of her
trust and her dreams. He--all of them--had need of her as she was. Her
belief in the ultimate good of things and persons, however, was beyond
power of human achievement; and the surest cure for disappointments
was to amputate all expectations. So the House Surgeon hardened his
heart and became as professionally severe as he knew how to be.
"It's absolutely impossible to expect a group of incurable children in an
institution to be made as normal and happy as other children. It can't be
done. Those kiddies are up against a pretty hard proposition, I know;
but the kindest thing you can do for them is to toughen them into not
feeling--"
The nurse in charge of Ward C