The New 25
He is of Morocco, brown and very lonely, and always shivering with cold. He speaks scarcely any French. His great dark eyes look to one with all the sadness of the eyes of animals that are dumb. Nobody understands him. He smiles up at us, with his beautiful white teeth and his big dumb eyes, and does not understand what we are saying. He makes me little magic-lanterns out of orange rinds, and tells me long stories about them, of which I understand not a word.
Once when I went back, just for an afternoon's visit to the hospital, I was wearing a bright blue silk scarf, and he took it and held it and cried over it, and would not give it back to me. I cannot imagine of what it reminded him, why he cried, or why he loved it.
He has three tiny little wooden dolls, scarcely bigger than almonds and wonderfully carved, that he never will let us touch. Madame Marthe thinks that they are strange gods of his; but I think they represent three children, far away, in lands where skies are blue, like my scarf.
He is only slightly wounded; very soon he will have to unwrap himself from my big white woollen shawl, and go away again to battles.
And I suppose I shall never know anything more about him.