"Do you remember a conversation we had, in this very place"—that was not wonderful, anyhow—"some time ago—before my last birthday—about God being kinder to some people than to other people?" she asked.
"Yes, I do," answered Mr. Spelt, who had been thinking about the matter a good deal since. "Are you of the same mind still, Mattie?"
"Well, yes, and no," answered Mattie. "I think now there may be something in it I can't quite get at the bottom of. Do you know, mother, I remembered all at once, the other day, that when I was a little girl, I used to envy Poppie. Now, where ever was there a child that had more of the blessings of childhood than me?"
"What made you envy Poppie, then, Mattie?"
"Well, you see, my father's shop was rather an awful place, sometimes. I never told you, mother, what gained me the pleasure of your acquaintance. Ever since I can remember—and that is a very long time ago now—I used now and then to grow frightened at father's books. Sometimes, you know, they were all quiet enough. You would generally expect books to be quiet, now wouldn't you? But other times—well, they wouldn't be quiet. At least, they kept thinking all about me, till my poor head couldn't bear it any longer. That always was my weak point, you know."
Mr. Spelt looked with some anxiety at the pale face and great forehead of the old little woman, and said:
"Yes, yes, Mattie. But we've got over all that, I think, pretty well by now."
"Well, do you know, Mr. Spelt, I have not even yet got over my fancies about the books. Very often, as I am falling asleep, I hear them all thinking;—they can hardly help it, you know, with so much to think about inside them. I don't hear them exactly, you know, for the one thinks into the other's thinks—somehow, I can't tell—and they blot each other out like, and there is nothing but a confused kind of a jumble in my head till I fall asleep. Well, it was one day, very like this day—it was a hot summer forenoon, wasn't it, mother?—I was standing at that window over there. And Poppie was playing down in the court. And I thought what a happy little girl she was, to go where she pleased in the sunshine, and not need to put on any shoes. Father wouldn't let me go where I liked. And there was nothing but books everywhere. That was my nursery then. It was all round with books. And some of them had dreadful pictures in them. All at once the books began talking so loud as I had never heard them talk before. And I thought with myself—'I won't stand this any longer. I will go away with Poppie.'
"So I ran down stairs, but because I couldn't open the door into the court, I had to watch and dodge father among the book-shelves. And when I got out, Poppie was gone—and then, what next, mother?"
"Then my thread knotted, and that always puts me out of temper, because it stops my work. And I always look down into the court when I stop. Somehow that's the way my eyes do of themselves. And there I saw a tiny little maiden staring all about her as if she had lost somebody, and her face looked as if she was just going to cry. And I knew who she was, for I had seen her in the shop before. And so I called to her and she came. And I asked her what was the matter."