Mrs. O'Brien made no answer. "John," said Peter, "there's something that I was thinking of last night and this morning, and it was this: You have a girl and I have a boy, that was both born on the one day. It's good friends we've always been, and your father and your mother and my father and my mother before us. And I was just thinking when your girl and my boy grows up, supposing that they like each other well enough, it might be pleasant to all of us that they'ld be married some time.
"There's no man's son that I'd rather see a daughter of mine married to than yours, Peter," said John, "if she herself was pleased. I'ld not ask her to take anybody she didn't like, but if she came to love him, and he came to love her, I'ld be as pleased as yourself."
"It was that I wanted to say," said Peter, "and I'd better go back to Ellen now."
John and his mother said no more till they were at home. They both went into the room where little Kathleen was. Mrs. Mulvey sat watching the baby. She went out and left them. The child was sleeping as peacefully as if there were no such thing in the world as sorrow or loss or doubt, or a fairy to help or harm.
"John," said Mrs. O'Brien, "I'd think I might have done harm to that child in trying to christen it, only I'm as sure as ever I was of anything that it's not a child at all, but one of the Good People, so I think there's no harm done. I don't know what would happen any of the Good People if he was to be rightly christened. I think he'ld not be able to stand it and would be driven out, so that they'ld have to send back the real child. Now, if a priest ever sees that creature that we've just seen, and asks: 'Has this child been christened?' they'll have to answer 'Yes,' and he cannot be christened again. And yet, with the jump that he gave out of my arms when I sprinkled the water, it's not sure I am that a drop of it touched him."
This is a chapter that you can skip, if you want to. And really I should advise you to. Nothing of importance happened in the next eighteen years. Of course I am obliged to write a little something to fill in all that time, but you are not obliged to read it. That is where you have such an advantage. I think it is much better for a book to have some parts that can be skipped just as well as not, you get through it so much faster. I have often thought what a good thing it would be if somebody would write a book that we could skip the whole of. I think a good many people would like to have such a book as that. I know I should.