"Well," I said, "all these unpleasant experiences--ringworm, shaved
head, freckles, and expulsion from school as an undesirable person--do
not appear to have depressed you much. You appear quite happy."

She laughed good-humouredly, then looked up out of her blue eyes as if
asking what more I had to say.

Just then a small girl about thirteen years old passed us--a child with
a thin anxious face burnt by the sun to a dark brown, and deep-set,
dark blue, penetrating eyes. It was a face to startle one; and as she
went by she stared intently at the little freckled girl.

Then I, to keep the talk going, said I could guess the sort of life
that child led.

"What sort of life does she lead?" asked Freckles.

She was, I said, a child from some small farm in the neighbourhood, and
had a very hard life, and was obliged to do a great deal more work
indoors and out than was quite good for her at her tender age. "But I
wonder why she stared at you?" I concluded.

"Did she stare at me!--Why did she stare?"

"I suppose it was because she saw you, a mite of a child, with a
nightcap on her head, standing here at the door of the inn talking to a
stranger just like some old woman."

She laughed again, and said it was funny for a child of five to be