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“Is that you?” she said, “from the other side of the county?”

“Yes, it’s me from the other side of the county. ”

“Then why didn’t you come through the upper woods? They were there just now. ”

“They were here a few minutes ago. I expect they knew my car had broken down, and came to see the fun. ”

“Nothing serious, I hope? How do cars break down?”

“In fifty different ways. Only mine has chosen the fifty-first. ”

She laughed merrily at the tiny joke, cooed with delicious laughter, and pushed her hat back.

“Let me hear,” she said.

“Wait a moment,” I cried, “and I’ll get you a cushion. ”

She set her foot on the rug all covered with spare parts, and stooped above it eagerly. “What delightful things!” The hands through which she saw glanced in the chequered sunlight. “A box here—another box! Why you’ve arranged them like playing shop!”

“I confess now that I put it out to attract them. I don’t need half those things really. ”

“How nice of you! I heard your bell in the upper wood. You say they were here before that?”

“I’m sure of it. Why are they so shy? That little fellow in blue who was with you just now ought to have got over his fright. He’s been watching me like a Red Indian. ”

“It must have been your bell,” she said. “I heard one of them go past me in trouble when I was coming down. They’re shy—so shy even with me. ” She turned her face over her shoulder and cried again: “Children! Oh, children! Look and see!”

“They must have gone off together on their own affairs,” I suggested, for there was a murmur behind us of lowered voices broken by the sudden squeaking giggles of childhood. I returned to my tinkerings and she leaned forward, her chin on her hand, listening interestedly.

“How many are they?” I said at last. The work was finished, but I saw no reason to go.

Her forehead puckered a little in thought. “I don’t quite know,” she said simply. “Sometimes more—sometimes less. They come and stay with me because I love them, you see. ”

“That must be very jolly,” I said, replacing a drawer, and as I spoke I heard the inanity of my answer.

“You—you aren’t laughing at me,” she cried. “I—I haven’t any of my own. I never married. People laugh at me sometimes about them because—because —”

“Because they’re savages,” I returned. “It’s nothing to fret for. That sort laugh at everything that isn’t in their own fat lives. ”

“I don’t know. How should I? I only don’t like being laughed at about them. It hurts; and when one can’t see…. I don’t want to seem silly,” her chin quivered like a child’s as she spoke, “but we blindies have only one skin, I think. Everything outside hits straight at our souls. It’s different with you. You’ve such good defences in your eyes—looking out—before any one can really pain you in your soul. People forget that with us. ”

I was silent, reviewing that inexhaustible matter—the more than inherited (since it is also carefully taught) brutality of the Christian peoples, beside which the mere heathendom of the West Coast nigger is clean and restrained. It led me a long distance into myself.

“Don’t do that!” she said of a sudden, putting her hands before her eyes.

“What?”

She made a gesture with her hand.

“That! It’s—it’s all purple and black. Don’t! That colour hurts. ”

“But how in the world do you know about colours?” I exclaimed, for here was a revelation indeed.

“Colours as colours?” she asked.

“No. ThoseColours which you saw just now. ”

“You know as well as I do,” she laughed, “else you wouldn’t have asked that question. They aren’t in the world at all. They’re in you—when you went so angry. ”