which succeed fields and woods.

I had lunched at the large old inn at noon on a hot summer's day; when
I sat down a black cloud was coming up, and by-and-by there was
thunder, and when I went to the door it was raining heavily. I leant
against the frame of the door, sheltered from the wet by a small tiled
portico over my head, to wait for the storm to pass before getting on
my bicycle. Then the innkeeper's child, aged five, came out and placed
herself against the door-frame on the other side. We regarded one
another with a good deal of curiosity, for she was a queer-looking
little thing. Her head, big for her size and years, was as perfectly
round as a Dutch cheese, and her face so thickly freckled that it was
all freckles; she had confluent freckles, and as the spots and blotches
were of different shades, one could see that they overlapped like the
scales of a fish. Her head was bound tightly round with a piece of
white calico, and no hair appeared under it.

Just to open the conversation, I remarked that she was a little girl
rich in freckles.

"Yes, I know," she returned, "there's no one in the town with such a
freckled face."

"And that isn't all," I went on. "Why is your head in a night-cap or a
white cloth as if you wanted to hide your hair? or haven't you got
any?"

"I can tell you about that," she returned, not in the least resenting
my personal remarks. "It is because I've had ringworms. My head is
shaved and I'm not allowed to go to school."