Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/320

 all anybody means by fairies—just how lovely things are if we can but open our eyes to see thim, an' take time from th' ugly business o' livin to hear thim, and get a place quiet enough to half see what everything means. I didn't know before, in Ireland, but now I'm like one born again to the ferlie country, and now I think I know. There aren't any Little People really but just in your own head"

Moira shook off his hand and faced him, laughing mockingly, her dark eyes wide with an elfin merriment. "Are there not, Piper Tim? Are there not? Listen! You'll see!" She held up a tiny forefinger to the great man towering above her. As he looked down on her, so pixy-like in the twilight of the pines, he felt his flesh creep. She seemed to be waiting for something infinitely comic which yet should startle her. She was poised, half turned as though for flight, yet hung so, without a quiver in an endless listening pause. The man tried in vain to remember the name of a single saint, so held was he by the breathless expectancy in the eyes of the little hobgoblin. His nerves gave way with a loud snap when she suddenly leaped up at him with snapping fingers and some whispered, half-heard exclamation of "Now! Now!" and turning he plunged down the hill in panic-stricken flight. And the next day Father Delancey took her down to the valley to begin her schooling.

Upon her return she had adopted the attitude which she never changed during all the years until Timothy went away. She would not speak openly, nor allow