"Was it only a bird, Kathleen dear?" she asked, when her sister tried to quiet her by telling her just how funny he looked, sitting up there in the tree and opening and shutting his big bill. "Faith, I thought it was an ogre!" "That's the very magpie that steals my young turkeys," said Bee, who had run out after Kathleen. "If you children will find a way to drive him off I will give you a shilling." Then she left the little girls to play by themselves, and Mary Ellen lay on the grass among the spring blossoms while Kathleen sat down beside her to tell her a long story. "This is a truly fairy rath," she began, "and Cousin Bee's farm is the fortune fairy's palace." And Cousin Bee, putting her cream into the churn, said to herself, "Sure, the farm is big enough to keep both the children for awhile. I'll let Kathleen stay on with Mary Ellen till her Aunt Hannah sends for her again." CHAPTER IX MAY-DAY ON LOUGH GARA "It's the cute way nature has with her!" exclaimed Kathleen, holding up her face for the white-thorn petals to blow down upon it. She and Mary Ellen had been to the old rath after flowers for the May-baskets, and were returning to the cottage, where Cousin Bee was waiting to take them to Lough Gara for the May-day picnic. A breeze was scattering the petals from the trees, which were "as white with bloom as the snow of one night," and Mary Ellen turned her face to the sky so that she, too, might feel the soft shower. "Sure, nature has a cute way," Kathleen repeated. "When a cloud hides the bright sun and you'd think an Irish rain was going to fall the next minute, the wind gives a laugh and sends a snowstorm instead; and here it is the first day of May, and the blackbirds are singing in the meadow." "Can you see the snow on the mountains far away?" asked Mary Ellen. "No, but the white chalk cliffs shine like snow," replied Kathleen. "It seems as if we must forget, here in Tonroe, about the mountains and the cold, snowy winter. When I wake up in the morning and hear the lark singing his way up into the sky, and smell the May-bloom through the window, I almost forget the gray stones and low clouds of purple Donegal." "Do you mind the old black crows that used to call over the hills all day long?" asked Mary Ellen. "Of caws! Of caws!" croaked Kathleen, so much like an old crow that her sister made her do it again and again, "to remind her of home," she said. The children had been at Cousin Bee's little farm in Tonroe for over two weeks, and Danny had made himself so useful that Patrick offered him good wages to stay and help him through the planting season. "Sure, I care more for work than for anything else just now," Danny made answer, and he rolled up his sleeves and went to work with a will. "There's no need for Kathleen to go to Kilkenny either, now that the school is near to closing for the summer," Bee suggested.