Katipah’s kite was green, with blue eyes in its square face; and in one corner it had a very small pursed-up red mouth holding a spray of peach-blossom. She had made it herself; and to her it meant the green world, with the blue sky over it when the spring begins to be sweet, and there, tucked away in one corner of it, her own little warm mouth waiting and wishing to be kissed: and out of all that wishing and waiting the blossom of hope was springing, never to be let go.
All round her were hundreds of others flying their kites, and all had some wish or prayer to Fortune. But Katipah’s wish and prayer were only that she might be loved.
The silver sandhills lay in loops and chains round the curve of the blue bay, and all along them flocks of gaily coloured kites hovered and fluttered and sprang. And, as they went up into the clear air, the wind sighing in the strings was like the crying of a young child. “Wahoo! wahoo!” every kite seemed to cradle the wailings of an invisible infant as it went mounting aloft, spreading its thin apron to the wind.
“Wahoo! wahoo!” sang Katipah’s blue-and-green kite, “shall I ever be loved by anybody?” And Katipah, keeping fast hold of the string, would watch where it mounted and looked so small, and think that surely some day her kite would bring her the only thing she much cared about.
Katipah’s next-door neighbour had everything that her own lonely heart most wished for: not only had she a husband, but a fine baby as well. Yet she was such a jealous, cross-grained body that she seemed to get no happiness out of the fortune Heaven had sent her. Husband and child seemed both to have caught the infection of her bitter temper: all day and night beating and brawling went on; there seemed no peace in that house.
But for all that the woman, whose name was Bimsha, was quite proud of being a wife and a mother: and in the daytime, when her man was away, she would look over the fence and laugh at Katipah, crying boastfully, “Don’t think you will ever have a husband, Katipah: you are too poor and unprofitable! Look at me, and be envious!”
Then Katipah would go softly away, and send up her kite by the seashore till she heard a far-off, sweet, babe-like cry as the wind blew through the strings high in air.
“Shall I ever be loved by anybody?” thought she, as she jerked at the cord; and away the kite flew higher than ever, and the sound of its call grew fainter.
One morning, in the beginning of the year, Katipah went up on to the hill under plum-boughs white with bloom, meaning to gather field-sorrel for her midday meal; and as she stooped with all her hair blowing over her face, and her skirts knotting and billowing round her pretty brown ankles, she felt as if some one had kissed her from behind.
“That cannot be,” thought Katipah, with her fingers fast upon a stalk of field-sorrel; “it is too soon for anything so good to happen.” So she picked the sorrel quietly, and put it into her basket. But now, not to be mistaken, arms came round her, and she was kissed.