. She turned to the
House Surgeon. "Bring Bridget down, quickly."

As he disappeared obediently through the door she faced the trustees,
as she had faced them once before, on the day previous. "Bridget will
know better than any one else what will make the children happiest.
Now wouldn't it be fun"--and she smiled adorably--"if you should all
play you were faery godparents, for once in your lifetime, and give
Bridget her choice, whatever it may be?"

This time the entire board smiled back at her; somehow, in some strange
way, it had caught a breath of Fancy. And then--the House Surgeon
re-entered with Bridget in his arms, looking very scared until she
spied "Miss Peggie."

The President did the nicest thing, proving himself the good man he
really was. He crossed hands with the House Surgeon, thereby making a
swinging chair for Bridget, and together they held her while Margaret
MacLean explained:

"It's this way, dear. Some one has offered you--and all the
children--a home in the country--a home of your very own. But the
trustees of Saint Margaret's hardly want to give you up; they think
they can take as good care of you--and make you just as happy here."

"But--sure--they'll have to be givin' us up. Weren't we afther givin'
a penny to the wee one yondther for the home?" and Bridget pointed a
commanding finger toward the door.

Everybody looked. There on the threshold stood the widow of the
Richest Trustee.

"What do you mean, dear? How could you have given her a penny?"
Margaret MacLean asked it in bewilderment.

"'Twas all the doin's o' the primrose ring." And then Bridget shouted
gaily across to the gray wisp of a woman. "Ye tell them. Weren't ye
afther givin' us the promise of a home?"

"And haven't I come to keep the promise?" she answered, as gaily. But
in an instant she sobered as her eyes fell on the open letter on the
President's desk. "I am so sorry I wrote it--that is why I have come;
not that I don't think you deserved it, for you do," and the widow of
the Richest Trustee looked at them unwaveringly.

If she was conscious of the surprised faces about, she gave no sign for
others to reckon by. Instead, she walked the length of the board-room
to the President's desk and went on speaking hurriedly, as if she
feared to be interrupted before she had said all she had come to say.
"I wish I had written in another way, a more helpful way. Why not add
your second surgical ward to Saint Marg