“I suppose, because I am kindred of so many, many things that live on forever. There are the colors on water when the sun strikes it through clouds. It can be green and gold and blue and silver all at once; and then there is the foam of the white caps. It is foam for a moment and then it is just water again. And there is the moonlight on rippling water, that goes away and never comes any more—not just the same. The mirth in the heart of a child is like all these things; and the heart of a child is the place I love best.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure it is better than the place where all the winds meet, or that other rainbow-place that you told me about.”
“And then,” she began again, “you know that children say things sometimes just in fun, but no one ever seems to understand that.”
“To be sure,” I said feelingly, remembering how Jessamine loved to tease and plague me.
“But there isn’t any harm in it—any more than—”
“Yes?” a little impatiently.
“Than in the things the pines say when the wind runs over the top of them. They are not—not important, exactly,—but they are always different. That is the best thing about being a child—the being different part. You have a grown-up word that means always just the same.”
“Consistent?” I asked.
“That is it. A child that is consistent is wrong some way. But I don’t remember having seen any of that kind.”
A smile that was not the smile of Jessamine stole into the Spirit’s face. It disconcerted me. I could not, for the life of me, decide how much of the figure before me was Jessamine and how much was really the Spirit of Mischief, or whether they were both the same.