“It doesn’t hurt you any to be afraid, when you do it all alone by yourself,” she reasoned, “and it doesn’t do you any good to be fond. It only amuses you,” she added, with sad wisdom. As I said, she was only seven, but she was very old indeed.
So the time went along until the weeks piled up into months. The summer she was eight, the Little Girl could not stand it any longer. She decided that something must be done. The Shining Mother and the Ogre were coming back to the green expanses. She had found that out at lessons.
“And then they will have it all to go over again—all the miser’bleness of my not being a Boy,” the Little Girl thought, sadly. “And I don’t know whether they can stand it or not, but I can’t.”
A wave of infinite longing had swept over the shy, sensitive soul of the Little Girl who should have been a Boy. One of two things must happen—she must be loved, or die. So, being desperate, she resolved to chance everything. It was under the Golden Pippin tree, rocking herself back and forth in the long grass, that she made her plans. Straight on the heels of them she went to the gardener’s little boy.
“Lend me—no, I mean give me—your best clothes,” she said, with gentle imperiousness. It was not a time to waste words. At best, the time that was left to practise in was limited enough.
“Your best clothes,” she had said, realizing distinctly that fustian and corduroy would not do. She was even a little doubtful of the best clothes. The gardener’s little boy, once his mouth had shut and his legs come back to their locomotion, brought them at once. If there was a suspicion of alacrity in his obedience towards the last, it escaped the thoughtful eyes of the Little Girl. Having always been a mistake, nothing more, how could she know that a boy’s best clothes are not always his dearest possession? Now if it had been the threadbare, roomy, easy little fustians, with their precious pocket-loads, that she had demanded!
There were six days left to practise in—only six. How the Little Girl practised! It was always quite alone by herself. She did it in a sensible, orderly way,—the leaps and strides first, whoops next, whistle last. The gardener’s little boy’s best clothes she kept hidden in the long grass, under the Golden Pippin tree, and on the fourth day she put them on. Oh, the agony of the fourth day! She came out of that practice period a wan, white, worn little thing that should never have been a Boy.
For it was heart-breaking work. Every instinct of the Little Girl’s rebelled against it. It was terrible to leap and whoop and whistle; her very soul revolted. But it was life or death to her, and always she persevered.
In those days lessons scarcely paid. They were only a pitiful makeshift. The Little Girl lived only in her terrible practice hours. She could not eat or sleep. She grew thin and weak.
“I don’t look like me at all,” she told herself, on a chair before her mirror. “But that isn’t the worst of it. I don’t look like the Boy, either. Ugh! how I look! I wonder if the Angel would know me? It would be kind of dreadful not to have anybody know you. Well, you won’t be you when you’re the Boy, so prob’ly it won’t matter.”