Then came the revelation. To finish comparing notes we sat down together in my swing. And partly because, when I made a new friend, I was nervously eager to give her the best I had and at once, and partly because I was always wanting to see if somebody would understand, and chiefly because I never could learn wisdom, I looked up in the apple tree, now forsaken of all its pink, and fallen in a great green stillness, and I told her about my lady in the tree. I told her, expecting now no more than I had received from Delia and the Eversley girls. But Mary Elizabeth looked up and nodded.
“I know,” she said. “I’ve seen lots of ’em. They’s a lady in the willow out in our alley. I see her when I empty the ashes and I pour ’em so’s they won’t blow on her.”
I looked at her speechlessly. To this day I can remember how the little curls were caught up above Mary Elizabeth’s ear that morning. Struck by my silence she turned and regarded me. I think I must have blushed and stammered like a boy.
“Can you see them too?” I asked. “In trees and places?”
“Why, yes,” she said in surprise. “Can’t everybody?”
Suddenly I was filled with a great sense of protection for Mary Elizabeth. I felt incalculably older. She had not yet found out, and I must never let her know, that everybody does not see all that there is to be seen in the world!
One at a time I brought out my treasures that morning and shared them with her, as treasures; and she brought out hers as matters of course. I remember that I told her about the Theys that lived in our house. They were very friendly and wistful. They never presumed or frightened one or came in the room when anyone was there. But the minute folk left the room—ah, then! They slipped out from everywhere and did their living. I was always trying to catch them. I would leave a room innocently, and then whirl and fling it open in the hope of surprising them. But always They were too quick for me. In the times when the family was in the rooms and They were waiting for us to go, They used to watch us, still friendly and wistful, but also a little critical. Sometimes a whole task, or a mood, could be got through pleasantly because They were looking on.
“But the minute folk left the room—ah then!”