“Oh yes,” breathed Rebecca Mary, sadly. “I don't suppose I could expect you to stay in there always; but—but I'm not very glad to see you. You needn't have come so SUDDEN,” she added, with gentle resentment.
The Thought of Growing Up crept into her mind and nestled down there. As thoughts go, it was not an unkind one.
“You'll get used to me sometime and like me,” it said, comfortingly. But Rebecca Mary knew better. She drove it out.
Why must legs keep on growing and unwelcome Thoughts come out of knotholes? Why could not little girls keep on sewing stents and learning arithmetic and carrying beautiful doll-beings to bed? Why had the Lord created little girls like this—this growing kind?
“If I had made the world,” began Rebecca Mary—but stopped in a hurry. The irreverence of presuming to make a better world than the Lord shamed her.
“I suppose He knew best, but if He'd ever been a little girl—” This was worse than the other. Rebecca Mary hastily dismissed the world and its Maker from her musings for fear of further irreverences.
One Thought came out of the knothole, illustrated. It was leading a tall woman-girl by the hand—no, it was pushing it as though the woman-girl were loath to come.
“Come along,” urged the new Thought, laughingly. “Here she is—this is Rebecca Mary. Rebecca Mary, this is YOU! You needn't be afraid of each other, you two. Take a good long look and get acquainted.”
The woman-girl was tall and straight. She had Rebecca Mary's hair, Rebecca Mary's eyes, mouth, little pointed chin. But not Rebecca Mary's legs—unless the long skirts covered them. She was rather comely and pleasant to look at. But Rebecca Mary tried not to look.
“She's got a lover—-some day she'll be getting married,” the new Thought said more abruptly, startlingly, than grammatically. And then with a little muffled cry Rebecca Mary put out her hands and pushed the woman-girl away—back into the knothole whence she had come. The Thought, too, for she had no room in her mind for thoughts like that.