He reached out to help her and she caught his thumb with both tiny hands and stood knee-deep in grass that barely covered his own ankles.
Her voice was as high and clear as a sleigh-bell. "Clellingherif," she said, as if that unintelligibility settled everything.
Wesley considered her unhappily. It was not Adventure yet; he saw only that he was saddled with a lost child who looked like a pixie and who talked like a bird, and that he would very probably lose the rest of his afternoon getting her off his hands.
He tried again.
"Where do you live?" It was so unlikely that her parents might have moved to Sampson City, with its insular aloofness and its once-a-day train, that he dismissed the idea at once.
Second thought heartened him briefly. "Are your parents staying at the inn?"
The "inn" was a rambling, seedily genteel resort catering mainly to retired couples and trout fishermen. He owned a half interest in it and lived there with his Aunt Jessica, who owned the other half and controlled both, and Miriam Harrell, who taught sixth grade at the Sampson County school and nursed a determination to become Mrs. Wesley Filburn. If the child's parents were new guests of his Aunt Jessica's, his problem was solved already.
It was not so simple. The child fingered the oval buckle of her belt, shaping a curious suggestion of pattern.
"Mitsik Clellingherif," she said.
She caught Wesley's thumb again and as quickly as that they were no longer on the banks of Sampson's Creek.