“Yes, I’m the youngest.”
“Why didn’t you want to go?”
Pen coloured. There was nothing at all inquisitive in the visitor’s voice, but there was a note of sympathy in it as though in some indescribable, marvellous way she could guess that Pen was in trouble, and that Pen had something on her mind that was worrying her a good deal. Insensibly Pen drew a little nearer to the white-robed visitor.
“I say,” she exclaimed, “shall I tell you what I thought you were when I saw you coming down the path?”
“What?” asked Angela.
“Well, perhaps I had been asleep, I can’t quite tell, but I opened my eyes with a start, and there was an angel coming along; I really thought for a minute that you were an angel; and that is your name, isn’t it?”
“Angela is my name.”
“Now that I come to look at you more closely, Angela,” said Pen, bringing out the word without the slightest hesitation, “I think you are very like an angel. Have you ever seen them?”
“I have never seen them, but I have often thought about them.”
“I don’t quite know why you are different from others,” said Pen. “It’s that far-away sort of look, and yet it isn’t the far-away look—you are different, anyhow.”