Meta considered.
"I almost think," she said, seriously, "they would have stayed children. But, of course, it's only a story, Addie. I don't suppose it's true. You take things up so. Don't go on puzzling about it."
I would leave off speaking about it for the time; I was so dreadfully afraid of her saying she would not tell it me again. And even though I knew it quite well, and could correct Meta if ever she made any part of it the least different, I was never tired of hearing the story. I would ask for it over and over again, and I used to have exactly the same feelings each time she told it, and always at the part where the children began to come out of their houses, some leaving their dinners, some tiny ones waking up out of their sleep, some only half-dressed, but all with the same strange look on their faces, I used to catch hold of Meta's hand and say to her, "Hold me fast, I'm so afraid of fancying I hear him," and then she would burst out laughing at me, and I would laugh at myself. For she was far too kind a girl to think of frightening me, and, indeed, except for a curious "coincidence"—to use a very long word which means something of the same kind as another thing happening at or about the same time—I do not think the story would have really taken hold of my fancy as it did.
One of my questions Meta was not able for some time to answer to my satisfaction.
"What are Pan-pipes?" I asked. The word "pipe" was so mixed up in my mind with white clay pipes, out of which we used to blow soap bubbles, that I could not understand it having to do with any kind of music.
"Oh," said Meta, "they're made of reeds, you know, all in a row like this," and she held up her fingers to her lips, "and you play them by whistling along them, do you see? It sounds something like when you fasten tissue-paper on a comb and blow along it. And they're called 'Pan'-pipes because—oh, I forgot, of course you haven't learnt mythology yet—'Pan' was one of the old pagan gods, a sort of fairy or wood sprite, you know, Addie, and the pictures and figures of him always show him playing on these reed pipes!"
I said "Yes," but I didn't really understand her description. It left a queer jumble in my head, and added to the strange, dreamy medley already there. But, though it was not till years afterwards that I learnt about "Pan," before Meta left us I was able to see for myself a set of his "pipes."
