"I never know, papa, what people mean by talking about childhood in that way. I never seem to have been a bit younger and more innocent than I am."
"Don't you remember a time, Wynnie, when the things about you—the sky and the earth, say—seemed to you much grander than they seem now? You are old enough to have lost something."
She thought for a little while before she answered.
"My dreams were, I know. I cannot say so of anything else."
I in my turn had to be silent, for I did not see the true answer, though I was sure there was one somewhere, if I could only find it. All I could reply, however, even after I had meditated a good while, was—and perhaps, after all, it was the best thing I could have said:
"Then you must make a good use of your dreams, my child."
"Why, papa?"
"Because they are the only memorials of childhood you have left."
"How am I to make a good use of them? I don't know what to do with my silly old dreams."
But she gave a sigh as she spoke that testified her silly old dreams had a charm for her still.