It is seldom that one finds and mourns a bird that is dead. But think of the choir of little bright breasts whose raptures nobody hears, nobody misses, nobody remembers. How like them we are, we of the loving hearts.
"I wouldn't wonder if there's lots of folks being that way right, right now," concluded Miggy.
Who am I that I should doubt this?
"A tournament," said Miggy, dreamily; "I s'pose that was something like the Java entertainment is going to be."
She slipped to one side of the big chair and laid both hands on its arm.
"Listen," she said. "Would this be one? You know Delly Watson that's crazy? She was in love with Jem Pitlaw, a school teacher that used to be here, an' that died, an' that wasn't in love with her even if he had stayed living, and it did that to her. You know ... she talks about things that nobody ever heard of, and listens, and laughs at what she thinks she hears. Ain't that like Elaine?"
Yes, if poor Delly Watson of the village had had a barge and a dwarf and a river winding from towered city to towered city, she would not have been unlike Elaine.
"And Jerry, that sets up folks's stoves and is so in love with the music teacher that he joined the chorus and paid his dues and set in the bass corner all winter to watch her and he can't sing a note. And she don't even see him when she passes him. Ain't that like Beatrice and the Pale Man?"
Jerry is so true and patient, and our young music teacher is so fair, that no one could find it sacrilege to note this sad likeness.