“You say funny things,” she said, contentedly. “But there isn’t any other little girl in the car. I looked, soon as I came on, ’cos I wanted one to play with. I like little girls. I like little boys, too,” she added, with innocent expansiveness.
“Then we’ll play I’m a little boy. You’d never believe it, but I used to be. You haven’t told me your name,” he reminded her.
“Hope,” she said, promptly. “Do you think it is a nice name?” She made the inquiry with an anxious interest which seemed to promise immediate change if the name displeased him. He reassured her.
“I think Hope is the nicest name a little girl could have, except one,” he said. “The nicest little girl I ever knew was named Katharine. She grew to be a nice big girl, too,—and has little girls of her own now, no doubt,” he added, half to himself.
“Were you a little boy when she was a little girl?” asked his visitor, with flattering interest.
“Oh, no; I was a big man, just as I am now. Her father was my friend, and she lived in a white house with an old garden where there were all kinds of flowers. She used to play there when she was a tiny baby, just big enough to crawl along the paths. Later she learned to walk there, and then the gardener had to follow her to see that she didn’t pick all the flowers. I used to carry her around and hold her high up so she could pull the apples and pears off the trees. When she grew larger I gave her a horse and taught her to ride. She seemed like my very own little girl. But by-and-by she grew up and became a young lady, and—well, she went away from me, and I never had another little girl.”
He had begun the story to interest the child. He found, as he went on, that it still interested him.
“Did she go to heaven?” asked the little girl, softly.
“Oh, dear, no,” answered the doctor, with brisk cheerfulness.
“Then why didn’t she keep on being your little girl always?” was the next leading question.