E BRUIN _goes over to the window and takes flowers
from the bowl and strews them outside the door._)

FATHER HART
You do well, daughter, because God permits
Great power to the good people on May Eve.

SHAWN BRUIN
They can work all their will with primroses;
Change them to golden money, or little flames
To burn up those who do them any wrong.

MARIE BRUIN (_in a dreamy voice_)
I had no sooner flung them by the door
Than the wind cried and hurried them away;
And then a child came running in the wind
And caught them in her hands and fondled them:
Her dress was green: her hair was of red gold;
Her face was pale as water before dawn.

FATHER HART
Whose child can this be?

MAURTEEN BRUIN
No one's child at all.
She often dreams that someone has gone by
When there was nothing but a puff of wind.

MARIE BRUIN
They will not bring good luck into the house,
For they have blown the primroses away;
Yet I am glad that I was courteous to them,
For are not they, likewise, children of God?

FATHER HART
Colleen, they are the children of the fiend,
And they have power until the end of Time,
When God shall fight with them a great pitched battle
And hack them into pieces.

MARIE BRUIN
He will smile,
Father, perhaps, and open His great door,
And call the pretty and kind into His house.

FATHER HART
Did but the lawless angels see that door,
They would fall, slain by everlasting peace;
And when such angels knock upon our doors
Who goes with them must drive through the same storm.

(_A knock at the door._ MAIRE BRUIN _opens it and then
goes to the dresser and fills a porringer with milk and
hands it through the door, and takes it back empty and
closes the door._)

MARIE BRUIN
A little queer old woman cloaked in green,
Who came to beg a porringer of milk.

BRIDGET BRUIN
The good people go asking milk and fire
Upon May Eve--Woe on the house that gives,
For they have power upon it for a year.
I knew you would bring evil on the house.

MAURTEEN BRUIN
Who was she?