"No, only five," she replied.

"Then," said I, "you must be a wonderfully clever child."

"Oh yes, I know I'm clever," she returned quite naturally, and away she
went, spinning over the wide space, and was presently lost in the
crowd.

A few minutes later a pleasant-looking but dignified lady came out from
among the tea-drinkers and bore down directly on me. "I hear," she
said, "you've been talking to my little girl, and I want you to know I
was very sorry I couldn't let her paddle. She was just recovering from
whooping-cough when I took her to the seaside, and I was afraid to let
her go in the water."

I commended her for her prudence, and apologised for having called her
cruel, and after a few remarks about her charming child, she went her
way.

And now I have no sooner done with this little girl than another cometh
up as a flower in my memory and I find I'm compelled to break off.
There are too many for me. It is true that the child's beautiful life
is a brief one, like that of the angel-insect, and may be told in a
paragraph; yet if I were to write only as many of them as there are
"Lives" in Plutarch it would still take an entire book--an octavo of at
least three hundred pages. But though I can't write the book I shall
not leave the subject just yet, and so will make a pause here, to
continue the subject in the next sketch, then the next to follow, and
probably the next after that.