Somebody's Little Girl

If I were just to tell the things that Bessie Bell remembered I should tell you some very strange things. Bessie Bell did not know whether she remembered them, or just knew them, or whether they just grew, those strange things in some strange country that never was anywhere in the world; for when Bessie Bell tried to tell about those strange things great grown wise people said: No, no, Bessie Bell, there is nothing in the world like that.
So Bessie Bell just remembered and wondered.
She remembered how somewhere, sometime, there was a window where you could look out and see everything green, little and green, and always changing and moving, away, away—beyond everything little, and green, and moving all the time. But great grown wise folks said: No, there is no window in all the world like that.
And once when some one gave Bessie Bell a little round red apple she caught her breath very quickly and her little heart jumped and then thumped very loudly (that is the way it seemed to her) and she remembered: Little apple trees all just alike, and little apple trees in rows all just alike on top of those and again on top of those until they came to a great row of big round red apples on top of all.
Rut great grown people said: No, no, Bessie Bell, there are no apple trees in all the world like that.
And one time Bessie Bell was at a pretty house and somebody sat her on a little low chair and said: Keep still, Bessie Bell.
She kept still so long that at last she began to be afraid to move at all, and she got afraid even to crook up her little finger for fear it would pop off loud,—she had kept still so long that all her round little fingers and her round little legs felt so stiff.
Then one, great grown person said: She seems a very quiet child. And the other said: She is a very quiet child—sometimes.
But just then Bessie Bell turned her head, and though her round little neck felt stiff it did not pop!—and she saw—something in a corner that was blue, green, and brown, and soft, and she forgot how afraid to move she was, and she forgot how stiff she thought she was, and she forgot how still she was told to be, and she jumped up and ran to the corner and cried out: Pretty! Pretty! Pretty!