s; there's no birth license to
sign, you know, with a love-and-cherish clause in it. Just come, wanted or
not, and afterward--"

But Hennessy was deep in speculations of his own. "Now if it was Ireland,
Miss Leerie, do ye know what I would be thinkin'?"

"What?"

He lowered his voice and looked furtively over his shoulder. "A
changeling! Sure as you're born, Miss Leerie, I'm thinkin' it's one o'
them little black imps the fairies leave in place o' the real child
they're after stealin'. I disremember if they have the likes o' that in
South America, but that's my notion, just the same."

Sheila O'Leary laughed inside and out. "Hennessy, you're wonderful. And
who but an Irishman would have thought of it! A changeling--a most
changeable changeling! What's the treatment?"

"A good brewin' of egg-shells--goose egg-shells if ye have 'em, hens' if
ye haven't. But don't ye be laughin'; 'tis a sign o' black doin's, an'
laughin' might bring bad luck on ye."

Sheila sobered. "We'll brew egg-shells. Now hurry home to Marm and coax
her hard, Hennessy."

Because Sheila O'Leary invariably had her way among the many who loved and
believed in her, and because Hennessy and Marm Hennessy were numbered
conspicuously among these, Sheila and her adopted moved early the
following morning into the diminutive and immaculate house of Hennessy,
with a vine-covered porch in front and a hen-yard in the rear. And that
night there was a plentiful brew of egg-shells on the kitchen stove, done
in the most approved Irish fashion, with the atom near by to inhale the
fumes.

"Maybe 'twill work, an' then again maybe 'twon't." Hennessy looked
anxious. "Magic, like anything else, often spoils in transportatin'."

"Oh, it will work!" Sheila spoke with conviction. "And we'll hope the
senora's letter won't travel too fast."

So the names of Sheila O'Leary and Francisco Enrique Manuel Machado y
Rodriguez were crossed off the books of the sanitarium, and the gossips
saw them no more. Only Doctor Fuller and Peter Brooks sought them out in
their new quarters, the doctor to attend professionally, Peter to attend
to the dictates of a persistent heart. Never a day went by that he did not
find his feet trailing the dust on the road to the house of Hennessy, and
Sheila dropped into the habit of watching for him from the vine-covered
porch at a certain time every afternoon. The picture of the best nurse at
the sanitarium sitting in a little old rocker with the