We found a bench and I held the child in my arms. She was in no excitement but she seemed troubled; and she drew her breath deeply, in that strange, treble sigh which I have known from no other who has not borne great sorrow. Have I said how beautiful she was? And there was about her nothing sprite-like, no elfin graces, no graces of a kind of angelic childhood such as make one fear for its flowering. She had merely the beauty of the child eternal, the beauty of normal little humankind. That may have been partly why her tranquil talk carried with it all the conviction which for some the commonplace will have.
“Do you think I ought to?” she asked us seriously.
“But see, dear one, how could that be?” I said soothingly. “What would you do—you and Halverson—if you were indeed to change places?”
“I s’pose,” she said thoughtfully, “that I should have to die an’ then Halverson would come an’ be me. An’ maybe I might get lost—on the way to being Halverson. But she begs me to change,” cried the child; “she—she says I’m not happy. She—she says if I was her I’d be happy.”
“Ah, well,” said I, “but you are happy, are you not?”
“Not very,” she answered, “not since papa went. He knew ’bout Halverson, an’ he didn’t scold. An’ he never laughed ’bout her. Since he went I haven’t had anybody to talk to—’bout Them.”
“About—whom?” I asked, and I felt for Pelleas’ hand in the darkness.
Margaret shook her head, buried against my arm.
“I can’t say Them,” she confessed, “because nobody has ever told me about them, an’ I don’t know how to ask. I can’t say Them. I can only see Them. I fink my papa could—too.”
“Now?” I asked, “can you see—now, Margaret?”