The Time for Naggeneen's Plan

I'd never do such a thing."

"But you'ld be leaving one of your own people in the place of it," Naggeneen answered, "and they'ld never know the differ. Or if they did, it would be no matter. A woman makes a great hullabaloo when her child looks sick and she thinks it's dying on her, but she doesn't care at all after a little. And then, it doesn't die, and she thinks it's her own child all the time, and there's no harm done. And His Majesty here thinks it's going to do a power of good for all of you. It's not, but he thinks it is."

"We'll never take a child from the O'Briens if I can help it," the Queen said. "From the Sullivans I don't care, but not from the O'Briens."

"We'll have to do it," said the King. "I don't like to hurt the O'Briens myself, but it's for the good of us all, and it's our only chance. These mortals are getting ahead of us that far, and they'll be doing something next that will exterminate us entirely. We'll send and get both the children."

The Queen urged again that the O'Briens had always been good to the Good People and must not be harmed, but the King had his mind set on Naggeneen's plan and he would hear of nothing else. It was settled and it could not be changed. They must have both children. They should live among the fairies till they were old enough to be sent out to learn the ways of men. And they should always come back and teach the fairies the ways of men that they had learned.

"And it's to-night we'd better be doing it, if we're to do it at all," said the King. "Now, who'll be the ones to go and be put in the place of the children?"

Nobody seemed to care about going to play the part of a baby with the Sullivans, or even with the O'Briens. Everybody was trying to get out of the King's sight behind the others. "We'ld have to be lyin' still all day," one whispered, "with never a dance to rest ourselves with."

"They might be puttin' holy water on us," said another, and all who heard him shivered.

"There'll be all sorts of unpleasantness, anyway," said a third.