When that wise little child, Joan, got well, we realized how much her illness had cost us; for we found that we had been right in believing she could save the fairies. She burst into a great storm of anger, for so little a creature, and went straight to Père Fronte, and stood up before him where he sat, and made reverence and said:
“The fairies were to go if they showed themselves to people again, is it not so?”
“Yes, that was it, dear.”
“If a man comes prying into a person’s room at midnight when that person is half-naked, will you be so unjust as to say that that person is showing himself to that man?”
“Well—no.” The good priest looked a little troubled and uneasy when he said it.
“Is a sin a sin, anyway, even if one did not intend to commit it?”
Père Fronte threw up his hands and cried out:
“Oh, my poor little child, I see all my fault,” and he drew her to his side and put an arm around her and tried to make his peace with her, but her temper was up so high that she could not get it down right away, but buried her head against his breast and broke out crying and said:
“Then the fairies committed no sin, for there was no intention to commit one, they not knowing that anyone was by; and because they were little creatures and could not speak for themselves and say the law was against the intention, not against the innocent act, because they had no friend to think that simple thing for them and say it, they have been sent away from their home forever, and it was wrong, wrong to do it!”
The good father hugged her yet closer to his side and said:
“Oh, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the heedless and unthinking are condemned; would God I could bring the little creatures back, for your sake. And mine, yes, and mine; for I have been unjust. There, there, don’t cry—nobody could be sorrier than your poor old friend—don’t cry, dear.”
“But I can’t stop right away, I’ve got to. And it is no little matter, this thing that you have done. Is being sorry penance enough for such an act?”
Père Fronte turned away his face, for it would have hurt her to see him laugh, and said:
“Oh, thou remorseless but most just accuser, no, it is not. I will put on sackcloth and ashes; there—are you satisfied?”
Joan’s sobs began to diminish, and she presently looked up at the old man through her tears, and said, in her simple way:
“Yes, that will do—if it will clear you.”
Père Fronte would have been moved to laugh again, perhaps, if he had not remembered in time that he had made a contract, and not a very agreeable one. It must be fulfilled. So he got up and went to the fireplace, Joan watching him with deep interest, and took a shovelful of cold ashes, and was going to empty them on his old gray head when a better idea came to him, and he said:
“Would you mind helping me, dear?”
“How, father?”
He got down on his knees and bent his head low, and said:
“Take the ashes and put them on my head for me.”
The matter ended there, of course. The victory was with the priest. One can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike Joan or any other child in the village. She ran and dropped upon her knees by his side and said:
“Oh, it is dreadful. I didn’t know that that was what one meant by sackcloth and ashes—do please get up, father.”
“But I can’t until I am forgiven. Do you forgive me?”
“I? Oh, you have done nothing to me, father; it is yourself that must forgive yourself for wronging those poor things. Please get up, father, won’t you?”
“But I am worse off now than I was before. I thought I was earning your forgiveness, but if it is my own, I can’t be lenient; it would not become me. Now what can I do? Find me some way out of this with your wise little head.”
The Père would not stir, for all Joan’s pleadings. She was about to cry again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged her own head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings and suffocations:
“There—now it is done. Oh, please get up, father.”
The old man, both touched and amused, gathered her to his breast and said:
“Oh, you incomparable child! It’s a humble martyrdom, and not of a sort presentable in a picture, but the right and true spirit is in it; that I testify.”
Then he brushed the ashes out of her hair, and helped her scour her face and neck and properly tidy herself up. He was in fine spirits now, and ready for further argument, so he took his seat and drew Joan to his side again, and said:
“Joan, you were used to make wreaths there at the Fairy Tree with the other children; is it not so?”
That was the way he always started out when he was going to corner me up and catch me in something—just that gentle, indifferent way that fools a person so, and leads him into the trap, he never noticing which way he is traveling until he is in and the door shut on him. He enjoyed that. I knew he was going to drop corn along in front of Joan now. Joan answered:
“Yes, father.”
“Did you hang them on the tree?”
“No, father.”
“Didn’t hang them there?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I—well, I didn’t wish to.”
“Didn’t wish to?”
“No, father.”
“What did you do with
