unfortunate that you see me with my people and we cannot speak! They
wouldn't understand. How could they, since they don't belong to our
world and know what we know? If I were to explain that we are different
from them, that we want to play together on the beach and watch the
waves and paddle and build castles, they would say, 'Oh yes, that's all
very well, but--' I shouldn't know what they meant by that, should you?
I do hope we'll meet again some day and stand once more hand in hand on
the beach--don't you?"

And with that she passed on and was gone, and I saw her no more.
Perhaps that glance which said so much had been observed, and she had
been hurriedly removed to some place of safety at a great distance. But
though I never saw her again, never again stood hand in hand with her
on the beach and never shall, I have her picture to keep in all its
flowery freshness and beauty, the most delicate and lovely perhaps of
all the pictures I possess of the little girls I have met.




XX

DIMPLES


It is not pleasant when you have had your say, made your point to your
own satisfaction, and gone cheerfully on to some fresh subject, to be
assailed with the suspicion that your interlocutor is saying mentally:
All very well--very pretty talk, no doubt, but you haven't convinced
me, and I even doubt that you have succeeded in convincing yourself!