SOMEBODY'S LITTLE GIRL
by Martha Young
Dedication
To
Two Little Elizabeths:
Elizabeth Young
and
Elizabeth Magruder
SOMEBODY'S LITTLE GIRL
If I were just to tell the things that Bessie Bell remembered I should tell you some very strange things. Bessie Bell did not know whether she remembered them, or just knew them, or whether they just grew, those strange things in some strange country that never was anywhere in the world; for when Bessie Bell tried to tell about those strange things great grown wise people said: "No, no, Bessie Bell, there is nothing in the world like that."
So Bessie Bell just remembered and wondered.
She remembered how somewhere, sometime, there was a window where you could look out and see everything green, little and green, and always changing and moving, away, away—beyond everything little, and green, and moving all the time. But great grown wise folks said: "No, there is no window in all the world like that."
And once when some one gave Bessie Bell a little round red apple she caught her breath very quickly and her little heart jumped and then thumped very loudly (that is the way it seemed to her) and she remembered: Little apple trees all just alike, and little apple trees in rows all just alike on top of those and again on top of those until they came to a great row of big round red apples on top of all.
Rut great grown people said: "No, no, Bessie Bell, there are no apple trees in all the world like that."
And one time Bessie Bell was at a pretty house and somebody sat her on a little low chair and said: "Keep still, Bessie Bell."