He broke off smiling, but not at any fancied impracticality.
“Why not?” said I. “The world needs us. You yourself said that the world is the shape of a dollar instead of a heart.”
“Ah, I’m not so sure, though,” Pelleas returned with an air of confidence. “We don’t know the ways of the North Pole. Perhaps we shall yet find that the world is the shape of a heart.”
“At all events,” said I, “we can act as if it were. And no one now can possibly prove the contrary.”
How would one act if the world were the shape of a heart? I was considering this seriously when, five minutes later, I selected with especial care a book to take to the park. I was going over alone that morning, for Pelleas was obliged to be downtown. This happens about three times a year, but the occasions are very important and Nichola and I make a vast ado over his departure and we fuss about until he pretends distraction, though we well know how flattered he is. Nichola even runs after him on the street with a newspaper to be read on the elevated, though we are all three perfectly aware that even with both pairs of spectacles he cannot possibly read on the jolting car. But he folds the paper and thanks Nichola and, as I believe, sits with the paper spread before him all the way to Hanover Square.
On that particular morning Pelleas left very early, and I arrived in the park when it was not yet a playground and a place for loitering but a busy causeway for the first pedestrians. I found a favourite bench near a wilding mass of Forsythia, with a curve of walk and a cherry-tree in sight. There I sat with my closed book—for in the park of a Spring morning one need never open one’s book providing only that the book shall have been perfectly selected. I remember that Pelleas once took down, as he supposed, a volume of well-beloved essays to carry with us and when we reached the park we found by accident that we had brought a doctor’s book instead. It was such a glad morning that we had not intended to read, but we were both miserable until Pelleas went back to exchange it. I cannot tell how we knew but certain voices refused to sing in the presence of that musty, fusty volume. When he had returned with the well-beloved book they all drew near at once. Therefore we will not go even in the neighbourhood of the jonquil beds with a stupid author.
But on this morning of Spring my book was in tune and all the voices sang, so that they and the sun and the procession of soft odours almost lulled me asleep. You young who wonder why the very dead do not awake in Spring, let me say that one has only to be seventy to understand peace even in May.
I was awakened by the last thing which, awake or asleep, one would expect to hear on such a morning; a sound which was in fact an act of high treason to be tried in a court of daffodils. It was a sob.
I opened my eyes with a start, expecting that a good fairy had planted some seeds which by having failed to come up on the instant had made her petulant. The sob, however, proceeded from a very human Little Nursemaid who sat at the extreme end of my bench, crying her eyes out. I could not see her face but her exquisitely neat blue gown and crisp white cap, cuffs and apron were a delight. She had a fresh pink drawn through her belt. Both plump hands were over her eyes and she was crying to break her heart. Her Little Charge sat solemnly by in a go-cart, regarding her, and dangling a pet elephant by one leg. The elephant, I may add, presented a very singular appearance through having lost large patches of its cloth and having been mended by grafting on selections from the outside of some woolly sheep.
I was in doubt what to do; but when I am not sure about offering my sympathy I always scan the victim to see whether she shows any signs of “niceness.” If she does I know that my sympathy will not come amiss. The sight of that fresh pink determined me: Little Nursemaid was “nice.”