"I was—trying to make it come true, Auntie Dorrie," this with a suspicious break in the voice.
"What, darling?" Doris came down and took the child in her arms.
"Mary says if you believe anything hard enough you can make it come true. She always can! I wanted to play with the fountain girls—I know it would be beautiful—but you have to be like them. You have to shut the whole world out—and then you know what they know."
"Why, little girl, do you think the fountain children are happier than you and Nancy?"
With that groping that all mothers feel when they first confront the individual in the child they believed they knew Doris asked her question.
"I've used Nancy and me all up!" was Joan's astonishing reply.
"All up?" the two meaningless words were the most that Doris could grasp.
"Yes, Aunt Dorrie. Dolls and Mary's silly stories and Nancy's funny games all over and over and over until they make me—sick!"
Joan actually looked sick, so intense was she.
"Nan is happy always, Aunt Dorrie—she's made like that—but I use things up and then I want something else. Mary said that, honest true, things would come if you believed hard enough. Maybe I cannot believe hard enough—or maybe Mary didn't speak truth. She doesn't always, Aunt Dorrie."