buttonhole, for your May."

He held out a sprig in not quite the right direction, and the Maestro
stepped forward and stooped to him, while Kirk's fingers found the
buttonhole.

"Now the Folk can do me no harm," smiled the old gentleman. "Good-by, my
dear."

* * * * *

Felicia was setting the table, with the candle-light about her hair. If
Kirk could have seen her, he would indeed have thought her beautiful. He
stood with one hand on the door-post, the other behind him. "Phil?" he
said.

"Here," said Felicia. "Where have you been, honey?"

He advanced to the middle of the room, and stopped. There was something
so solemn and unchancy about him that his sister put a handful of forks
and spoons on the table and stood looking at him. Then he said, slowly:

"I come a-maying through the wood,
A-for to find my queen;
She must be glad and she must be good,
And the fairest ever seen.

And now have I no further need
To seek for loveliness;
She standeth at my side indeed--
Felicia--Happiness!"

With which he produced the wreath of Mayflowers, and, flinging himself
suddenly upon her with a hug not specified in the rite, cast it upon her
chestnut locks and twined himself joyfully around her. Phil, quite
overcome, collapsed into the nearest chair, Kirk, May-flowers and all,
and it was there that Ken found them, rapturously embracing each other,
the May Queen bewitchingly pretty with her wreath over one ear. "I
didn't make it up," Kirk said, at supper. "The Maestro did--or at least
he said the Folk taught him one like it. I can't remember the thanking
one he sang before the feast. And Ken, he says _your_ name's good
Anglo-Saxon and means 'a defender of his kindred.'"

"It does, does it?" said Ken. "You'll get so magicked over there some
time that we'll never see you again; or else you'll come back cast into
a spell, and there'll be no peace living with you."

"No, I won't," Kirk said. "And I like it. It makes things more
interesting."

"I should _think so_," said Ken--secretly, perhaps, a shade envious of
the Maestro's ability.

As he locked up Applegate Farm that night, he stopped for a moment at
the door to look at the misty stars and listen to the wind in the
orchard.

"'A defender of his kindred,'" he murmured. "_H'm!_"

* * * * *

Hardly anything is more annoying than a mysterious elder brother. That
Ken was tinkering at the _Flyin