or shaking his hand.
“I can see that, but what for?”
“We didn’t know whether you would figure it out or no,” Maura’s emerald-green eyes were bright with glee. “A celebration of your graduation.”
“And ours,” said Marcy Collier. A shy beauty with black hair and very white skin, Marcy had fallen in love with Enoch. Since the end of the last school year, she’d been living at the farm full time. The shy girl had become a reserved but much more confident woman. Keith was pleased. She needed stable roots to blossom, and she’d gotten them. “But mostly for you.”
“But I graduated months ago,” Keith protested.
“But not from my class,” the Elf Master said.
A stocky, older male with red hair and beard and gold-rimmed glasses balanced on his nose, the master emerged from the midst of the throng. The others parted respectfully to make way for him. He rocked back on his heels to regard Keith.
“Until your last assignment I did not accept that you had demonstrated the requisite knowledge to earn the degree of Bachelor of Arts neither according to the charter of your unifersity, or to me. I am now satisfied. And, now, about your definition of vhen a paper is due …” His eyebrows lifted meaningfully. Keith opened his mouth to protest.
“Later, later,” the Master’s wife, Orchadia, said, laughing. She put a brimming wooden cup into her husband’s hand. “A toast.”
“Yes, a toast to the good ones who haf vorked so hard,” said old Ludmilla Hempert, the retired University cleaning woman who had been the first Big Person the elves had learned to trust. Moving slowly but still with an upright spine, she came over to kiss Keith on the cheek. Her flower-blue eyes twinkled. “I am glat to see you here again with my little ones.”
“Thanks, folks,” Keith said, deeply moved. “I’m really delighted.”
“Speechless?” asked Pat, Keith’s former roommate.
“Never.” Keith grinned. “I’ll think of something to say after I’ve eaten. It seems like weeks since I’ve had a square meal. And nothing as good as this.”
“We wait for you to begin,” the Elf Master said, cordially. He gestured toward the long table under the window, which had been laid out as a buffet. Sliced meats and cheeses covered one huge platter beside a basket of rolls. Salads galore followed, most of them made with fresh fruits and vegetables from the community garden. Keith took Diane’s arm and escorted her to the end of the line.
“Congratulations,” said Tiron, swinging into line with Catra, the Little Folks’ Archivist on his arm. “Didn’t know any Big People who had the wit or the endurance to measure up to our standards, and here’s four of you. Will wonders never cease?”
“Thanks, I think,” Keith said. “How’s things going?”
“Oh, well, well,” Tiron said, patting Catra’s arm possessively. She gave Keith a sly grin. He thought he understood the byplay.
Tiron was the newest member of the community, imported personally, though unwittingly, from Ireland by Keith in a suitcase that had formerly been filled with the student’s clothes. He was a carver of enormous skill and matching ego. He had also acquired a reputation as a ladies’ man. Keith wondered what had happened to Catra’s longtime boyfriend Ronard. There he was, in the crowd near the kitchen door. His blazing gray eyes were fixed on the back of Catra’s tightly-coiffed chestnut head and Tiron’s curly dark one. Keith suspected that Catra was getting tired of waiting for Ronard to jump the broomstick with her—all right, so the Folk didn’t use broomsticks in their wedding ceremony—but Ronard wasn’t getting the message. The newcomer was good looking, very talented, and not at all ashamed to toot his own horn. He was a good prospect, or a good lever to pry a reluctant suitor off the fence. Ronard wasn’t the only person who looked disgruntled. Catra’s younger sister Candlepat, the village flirt, was