Only I 'll HAVE to -- the music will call and call and call me until I MUST follow . '' `` We 'll all go , '' cried Di , catching fire at the flame of Walter 's fancy , and half-believing she could see the mocking , retreating figure of the mystic piper in the far , dim end of the valley . `` No . You 'll sit here and wait , '' said Walter , his great , splendid eyes full of strange glamour . `` You 'll wait for us to come back . And we may not come -- for we can not come as long as the Piper plays . He may pipe us round the world . And still you 'll sit here and wait -- and WAIT . '' `` Oh , dry up , '' said Mary , shivering . `` Do n't look like that , Walter Blythe . You give me the creeps . Do you want to set me bawling ? I could just see that horrid old Piper going away on , and you boys following him , and us girls sitting here waiting all alone . I dunno why it is -- I never was one of the blubbering kind -- but as soon as you start your spieling I always want to cry . '' Walter smiled in triumph . He liked to exercise this power of his over his companions -- to play on their feelings , waken their fears , thrill their souls . It satisfied some dramatic instinct in him . But under his triumph was a queer little chill of some mysterious dread . The Pied Piper had seemed very real to him -- as if the fluttering veil that hid the future had for a moment been blown aside in the starlit dusk of Rainbow Valley and some dim glimpse of coming years granted to him . Carl , coming up to their group with a report of the doings in ant-land , brought them all back to the realm of facts .
`` Ants ARE darned XXXXX ` resting , '' exclaimed Mary , glad to escape the shadowy Piper 's thrall .
at for in of on over to under until with