"Now you must come out in my garden. Daddy and I have the greatest fun with the flowers. If I didn't have them I would grow very lonesome. They are my friends and are just like nice people; they talk to me," she went on, now entirely free from restraint. Her flowers were really more wonderful than they seemed at first.
Along the high-tide mark was a trimmed hedge of stunted mangrove trees with their ariel prop roots carefully trained into a fence; next to that was a row of most beautiful water lilies, seemingly ever blooming, as white as the soul of the girl who pointed them out with so much pride and joy.
"You see," she explained with artless simplicity, "one time our garden was nothing but jagged rocks and coral that grows to look like flowers. Don had to carry mud out of the water to make soil before we could do any planting. That is why I wanted to get that 'gator; he wallows them down and abuses them, and Daddy says that every 'gator's hide I get will keep me in school for a month, and, you see, before long I'm going away up North to school. Do you know anything about the schools up there?" she looked up at me eagerly for my answer.
"No—I don't know much about the schools, but I can easily find out for you," I replied.
"Oh—I hate to think of leaving Daddy here alone, but he says—I must. I often lay in bed by the window where I can see the stars, the North star, and wonder if people I will meet there are as nice as my flowers and if the great cities are as beautiful as the forests and caves I see at the bottom of the sea when I dive for sponges."
I stopped and looked at her, astonished. Evidently she divined the question I would ask.
"Oh, yes, ever since I was a child and until lately I have gone with Daddy sponging, and can stay down longer than he can—he stays longer than anyone else. Of late he won't let me go. He says I stay down too long. But I just can't help it, for I see such beautiful things down there, great ferns as big as trees, streets, parks in so many colors about which I can only dream and can't describe. I feel so happy I don't want to come up, and sometimes he has to give me oxygen to bring me to. He is afraid something will happen to me so he won't let me go any more—only once in a while, in shallow water."
I saw the smoke of a train in the north and looked at my watch.
"I am sorry to leave but I must catch this train. It will stop for me."