“Lost you?” echoed my father.
“Oh,” said Zyp, with a little cluck, “I knew all along how the tramp was to end. There was an old one, a woman, lived in the forest, and she told me a deal of things. She knew me better than them all, and I loved her because she was evil, so they said. She told me some rhymes and plenty of other things.”
“Well?” said my father.
“We walked east by the sun for days and days. Then we came to the top of a big, soft hill, where little beetles were hopping among the grass, and below us was a great town like stones in a green old quarry, and the woman said: ‘Run down and ask the name of it while I rest here.’ And I ran with the wind in my face and was joyful, for I knew that she would escape when I was gone, and I should never see her again.”
“And then you tumbled into the water?” said my father.
Zyp nodded.
“And now,” she said, “I belong to nobody, and will you have me?”
My father shook his head, and in a moment sobs most piteous were shaking the girl’s throat. So forlorn and pretty a sight I have never seen before or since.
“Well,” he said, “if nobody comes to claim you, you may stop.”
And stop Zyp did. Surely was never an odder coming, yet from that day she was one of us.