“Good-by, my Sunshine!” she says. The Child catches the hand in a rush of loving worship and kisses it.
“I will never be cross to William Searles again, never!” she cries. “I will be good to everybody—even to stupid people!” Miss Salome pinches her cheek and laughs.
And the Child goes out and down the steps of the terrace, rapt, wondering, lifted to a height of love and admiration that keeps her little soul to its sweetest, highest pitch for—ah, measure not the time, I beg you! The children who are older, how long do the glow and the flush remain with them? They can only say, “There will be another!” and wait for it as well and patiently as may be.
The Child goes back to the life of everyday, and embroiders its dull web with eyes of peacocks and sifts into it the scent of sandal-wood, and sets it weaving to the tune of ballads, quaint and sweet. Yet she has taken into another’s web, unknowing, a tiny scarlet thread of happiness, that weaves through the tarnished cloth of silver and blesses the pattern as it grows. And the Master of the Looms has planned it all.
ARDELIA IN ARCADY
“Throwing assorted refuse.”
When first the young lady from the College Settlement dragged Ardelia from her degradation—she was sitting on a dirty pavement and throwing assorted refuse at an unconscious policeman—like many of her companions in misery, she totally failed to realize the pit from which she was digged. It had never occurred to her that her situation was anything less than refined, and though, like most of us, she had failed to come up to her wildest ideals of happiness, in that respect she differed very little from the young lady who rescued her.
“Come here, little girl,” said the young lady invitingly. “Wouldn’t you like to come with me and have a nice, cool bath?”
“Naw,” said Ardelia, in tones rivaling the bath in coolness.