So Kathleen washed the dishes and watched the young turkeys. She fed the hens and found their eggs when they stole nests in the little village of grain-stacks in the hay-haggard. And, best of all, she found an old cow-bell in the barn and set Mary Ellen to ringing it every time the thieving magpie came back to his nest, until he was glad to take his family away to live in a quieter neighborhood and leave the young turkeys to wander through the old rath in safety. In fact, she made herself so useful that Uncle Barney, over in Killaraght, nodded his head when he heard of it, and Grandmother Connell said in the old Gaelic, which looks in print as if it might be fairy speech, "Kathleen always had good sense and handy ways." And now it was May-day at last, and the little family had been busy all the morning getting ready for the picnic. "Come, children," called Bee from the house door, "here are Norah Higgins and Hannah Kelley waiting for us, and Patrick and Danny have gone on ahead for the boat." Then off they all went down the lane, between the hedges of pink hawthorn, purple lilac and gleaming golden gorse, across the fields, and along the green bank of the river. A neighbor who was driving his family down to the lake in a jaunting-car stopped to ask them why they weren't riding themselves, but Bee said she thought it was far more pleasant to walk, and they trudged along, talking and laughing merrily. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York "A NEIGHBOR WAS DRIVING HIS FAMILY DOWN TO THE LAKE IN A JAUNTING-CAR." The jaunting-car has side seats, with a "well" between them for parcels. _Page 58_] Pink and white mayflowers, blue wall-flowers and yellow daffies grew under their feet, and the fields were full of blue-bells. Robins and thrushes sang over their heads, and in the distance they heard the sound of a hunting horn and the baying of the hounds. Danny was waiting for them at the boat landing, and Patrick made haste to gather his party into a boat and row them out upon the blue water, so that they could watch the happy crowds coming and going along the shore. Kathleen looked back across the fields and saw hundreds of men, women, and children, all dressed in their very best, trooping toward the lake, carrying lunch-baskets for their May-day picnic on Lough Gara. "Oh, Molly darling," she whispered, "it's better than anything we ever thought of in Donegal. It's a wish come true." Mary Ellen clung to her sister's hand, listening to the happy voices calling from boat to boat, and from water to shore. "It must be the place Grandma Barry used to tell us about," she said,—"the place where happiness is so common you can buy it for a ha'penny." Kathleen's eyes were fixed on the green island toward which Danny was rowing them. "It looks more like the home of the fairies than does the Rock of Doon," she told Bee.