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 _Flying Dutchman_ (as he had immediately called
the power-boat, on account of its ghostly associations) was evident to
his brother and sister, but why he should be doing so they could not
fathom.
"We can't afford to run around in her as a pleasure yacht," Felicia
said.
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