The girls cl.u.s.tered round, and began in orthodox fashion to hang their garlands on the leafless branches of a stunted tree that stretched itself over the spring. They were in various moods, some giggling, some half-awed, some silent, and some chattering.

"It isn't as high as it was last year, so I don't believe it will work so well," said Evie Bennett. "St. Perran must be in a bad temper, and hasn't looked after it properly. Tiresome old man, why can't he remember his own day?"

"He's got to do double duty, poor old chap!" laughed Betty Scott. "You forget he's the patron saint of the sailors as well, and is supposed to be out at sea attracting the fish. Perhaps he just hadn't time this morning, and thought the well would do."

"Let well alone, in fact," giggled Evie.

"Oh, shut her up for her bad pun! Dip her head in the water! Make her try her luck first!"

"Pleased to accommodate you, I'm sure. Here's my pin," returned Evie.

"Now, if you're ready, I'll begin and consult the oracle."

St. Perran's ceremony had to be performed in due order, or it was supposed to be of no effect. First of all, Evie solemnly dropped her pin in the well, as a species of votive offering, while silently she murmured a wish. Then placing a small piece of stick on the surface of the water in the exact centre of the basin, she repeated the time-honoured 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".

All eyes were fixed eagerly on the piece of stick, which was already commencing to circle round in the water. If it found its way successfully through the gap, and was washed down by the stream, it was a sign that St. Perran had it safely and would attend to the matter; but if it were stranded on the edge of the basin, the wish would remain unfulfilled. Round and round went the tiny twig, bobbing and dancing in the eddies; but, alas! the water was low this February, and instead of sweeping the twig triumphantly through the aperture, it only washed it to one side, and left it clinging to some overhanging fronds of fern that dipped into the spring. Evie heaved a tragic sigh of disappointment.

"I'm done for at any rate!" she groaned. "St. Perran won't have anything to say to me this year. Oh, and it was such a lovely wish! I'll tell you what it was, now it's not going to come off. I wished some aviator would ask me to have a seat in his aeroplane, and take me right over to America in it!"

The girls t.i.ttered.

"What a particularly likely wish to be fulfilled! No, my hearty, you can't expect St. Perran to have anything to do with aeroplanes," said Betty Scott. "The good old saint probably abhors all modern inventions.

I'm going to wish for something easy and probable."

"What?"

"Ah! wouldn't you like to know? I shan't tell you, even if I fail. Shall I try next?"

Whatever Betty's easy and probable desire may have been, the result was bad, and her stick, after several thrilling gyrations, tagged itself on to Evie's under the cl.u.s.ter of fern. She bore her ill luck like a stoic.

"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 sn.i.g.g.e.ring! 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.

"It was a funny thing that our sticks should all 'stick', and Gerda's just sail off as easily as you like," said Deirdre that evening, as, with Dulcie, she gave an account of the occurrence to Phyllis Rowland, a member of the Sixth. As one of the elect of the school, Phyllis would not have condescended to consult the famous oracle, but she nevertheless took a sneaking interest in the annual ceremony, and was anxious to know how St. Perran's votaries had fared.

"Did you do it really properly?" she enquired. "An old woman at Perranwrack once told me it wasn't any use at all if you forgot the least thing."

"Why, we hung up our garlands and then wished, and said the rhyme, and threw in our sticks."

"Oh, that isn't half enough. Where were you looking when you wished?

Facing the sea? Your stick should be chosen from the third twig on the third branch, and it ought to be turned round three times, and held between your third fingers. Did you do all that?"

The faces of Deirdre and Dulcie were a study.

"No, we didn't. But Gerda Thorwaldson did it--every bit. And the water came down ever so much faster for her turn, too."

"Probably she went behind the well, and cleared the channel of the stream. That's a well-known dodge to make the water flow quicker, and help the saint to work."

"I certainly saw her climbing down the rocks," gasped Dulcie.

"Then she's a cleverer girl than I took her for, and deserves her luck,"

laughed Phyllis. "Look here, I can't stay wasting time any longer. I've got my prep to do. Ta, ta! Don't let St. Perran blight your young lives.

Try him again next year."

Left alone, Deirdre and Dulcie subsided simultaneously on to a bench.

"It beats me altogether," said Dulcie, shaking her head. "How did she manage to do it? How did she know? Who told her?"

"That's the puzzler," returned Deirdre. "Certainly not Phyllis, and I don't believe anybody else ever heard of those extra dodges. Gerda's only been a fortnight at the school, and says she's never been in Cornwall in her life before, so how could she know? Yet she did it all so pat."

"It's queer, to say the least of it."

"Do you know, Dulcie, I think there's something mysterious about Gerda.

I've noticed it ever since she came. She seems all the time to be trying to hide something. She won't tell us a sc.r.a.p about herself, and yet she's always asking questions."