"One can't have everything in this world," she philosophized. "Perhaps I'll get it next year instead. Deirdre Sullivan, you deserve to lose your own for sniggering! This trial ought to be taken solemnly. We'll get St. Perran's temper up if we make fun of it." "I thought he was out at sea, attracting the fishes!" said Deirdre. "I'm not sure that Cornish saints can't be in two places at once, just to show their superiority over Devonshire ones. Well, go on! Laugh if you like! But don't expect St. Perran to take any interest in you!" It certainly seemed as though the patron of the well had for once forsaken his favourite haunt. Girl after girl wished her wish and repeated her spell, but invariably to meet with the same ill fortune, till a melancholy little clump of eight sticks testified to the general failure. "Have we all lost? No, Gerda Thorwaldson hasn't tried! Where's Gerda? She's got to do the same as anybody else! Gerda Thorwaldson, where are you?" Gerda for the moment had been missing, but at the sound of her name she scrambled down from the rocks above the well, looking rather red and conscious. "What were you doing up there?" asked Dulcie sharply. "It's your turn to try the omen. Go along, quick; we shall have to be jogging back in half a jiff." Gerda paused for a moment, and with face full towards the sea muttered her wish with moving lips; then turning to the tree, she carefully counted the third bough from the bottom, and the third twig on the bough. Breaking off her due portion, she twisted it round three times, and holding it between the third fingers of either hand, dropped it into the water, while she rapidly repeated the magic formula: "Perran, Perran of the well, What I've wished I may not tell, 'Tis but known to me and you, Help me then to bring it true". The girls watched rather half-heartedly. They were growing a little tired of the performance. They fully expected the ninth stick to drift the same way as its predecessors, but to everybody's astonishment it made one rapid circle of the basin, and bobbed successfully through the gap. "It's gone! it's gone!" cried Betty Scott in wild excitement. "St. Perran's working after all. Oh, why didn't he do it for me?" "How funny it should be the only one!" said Elyned Hughes. "I believe the water's running faster than it did before," commented Romola Harvey. "Has the old saint turned on the tap?" "Shall I get my wish?" said Gerda, who stood by with shining eyes. "Of course you'll get it--certain sure. And jolly fortunate you are too. You've won the luck of the whole Form. Don't I wish I were you, just!" "You're evidently St. Perran's favourite!" laughed Annie Pridwell. "Come along, it's nearly time for call-over. We'll be late if we don't sprint," said Barbara Marshall, consulting her watch, and starting at a run on the path that led back to the Dower House.