A Traveller in Little Things

by W. H. Hudson

"Then," said I, recollecting Humpty Dumpty's question in arithmetic to Alice, "how much is one-an'-one-an'-one-an'-one-an'-one-an'-one?"—speaking it as it should be spoken, very rapidly.

She looked at me quite earnestly for a moment, then said, "And can you tell me how much is two-an'-two-an'-two-an'-two-an'-two-an'-two?"—and several more two's all in a rapid strain.

"No," I said, "you have turned the tables on me very cleverly. But tell me, do they teach you nothing?"

"Oh yes, they teach me something!" Then dropping her head a little on one side and lifting her little hands she began practising scales on the bar of her pram. Then, looking at me with a half-smile on her lips, she said: "That's what they teach me."

After a little further conversation she told me she was from London, and was down with her people for their holiday.

I said it seemed strange to me she should be having a holiday so late in the season. "Look," I said, "at that cold grey sea and the great stretch of sand with only one group of two or three children left on it with their little buckets and spades."

"Yes," she said, in a meditative way; "it is very late." Then, after a pause, she turned towards me with an expression in her face which said plainly enough: I am now going to give you a little confidential information. Her words were: "The fact is we are just waiting for the baby."

"Oh!" screamed the lady in black. "Why have you said such a thing! You must not say such things!"

And again the child turned her head and looked earnestly, inquiringly at the lady, trying, as one could see from her face, to understand why she was not to say such a thing. But now she was not sure of her ground as on the other occasion of being rebuked. There was a mystery here about the expected baby which she could not fathom. Why was it wrong for her to mention that simple fact? That question was on her face when she looked at her attendant, the lady in black, and as no answer was forthcoming, either from the lady, or out of her own head, she turned to me again, the dissatisfied expression still in her eyes; then it passed away and she smiled. It was a beautiful smile, all the more because it came only at rare intervals and quickly vanished, because, as it seemed to me, she was all the time thinking too closely about what was being said to smile easily or often. And the rarity of her smile made her sense of humour all the more apparent. She was not like Marjorie Fleming, that immortal little girl, who was wont to be angry when offensively condescending grown-ups addressed her as a babe in intellect. For Marjorie had no real sense of humour; all the humour of her literary composition, verse and prose, was of the unconscious variety. This child was only amused at being taken for a baby.

Then came the parting. I said I had spent a most delightful hour with her, and she, smiling once more put out her tiny hand, and said in the sweetest voice: "Perhaps we shall meet again." Those last five words! If she had been some great lady, an invalid in a bath-chair, who had conversed for half an hour with a perfect stranger and had wished to express the pleasure and interest she had had in the colloquy, she could not have said more, nor less, nor said it more graciously, more beautifully.