It came usually with the wind, moreover, and went with the wind, and wind accordingly excited the child. "Listen! Father!" he would exclaim when no air was moving anywhere and the day was still as death. Then: "Plop! So there you are!" as though it had dropped through empty space and landed at his feet. "It came from a tremenjus height," the child explained. "The wind's up there, you see, to-day." Which struck the parent's mind as odd, because it proved later true. An upper wind, far in the higher strata of air, came down an hour or so afterwards and blew into a storm.
Fire and flowers, too, were connected with this invisible playmate. "He'll make it burn, father," the child said convincingly, when the chimney smoked and the coals refused to catch, and then became very busy with his friend in the grate and about the hearth, just as though he helped and superintended what was being invisibly accomplished. "It's burning better, anyhow," agreed the father, astonished in spite of himself as the coals began to glow and spurt their gassy flames. "Well done; I am very much obliged to you and your little friend."
"But it's the only thing he can do. He likes it. It's his work really, don't you see—keeping up the heat in things."
"Oh, it's his natural job, is it? I see, yes. But my thanks to him, all the same."
"Thank you very much," said grave Edward, aged five, addressing his tiny friend among the fire-irons. "I'm much mobliged to you."
Edward was a bit older when the flower incident took place—with the geranium that no amount of care and coaxing seemed able to keep alive. It had been dying slowly for some days, when Edward announced that he saw its "inside" flitting about the plant, but unable to get back into it. "It's got out, you see, and can't get back into its body again, so it's dying."
"Well, what in the world are we to do about it?" asked his father.
"I'll ask," was the solemn reply. "Now I know!" he cried, delighted, after asking his question of the empty air and listening for the answer. "Of course. Now I see. Look, father, there it is—its spirit!" He stood beside the flower and pointed to the earth in the pot.
"Dear me, yes! Where d'you see it? I—don't see it quite."
"He says I can pick it up and put it back and then the flower will live." The child put out a hand as though picking up something that moved quickly about the stem.