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Justin was too well-fed to be imaginative. And the creature after all had spoken, had asked him something in good enough English: on its bewildering head it wore the most ordinary child’s sailor cap with a gilt lettering on the ribbon—H.M.S. Indomitable; yet, for a ridiculous instant, its fugitive, bodiless air beguiled him, and he could have believed himself agape before a changeling, a come-by-chance of wind and rain, a fairy nothing, gone with the sky’s first dispelling streak of blue.

“If you please,” the creature began again anxiously, and stopped. There was a sound of yielding hay, and before Justin could stretch out a hand it had disappeared with some suddenness. There was a scuffle and a bump, and Justin thought he heard a whimper. He rolled lazily to the edge of the shelf and looked over. The child—he could see now that it was a little girl—was standing below him in the crushed stubble, brushing mournfully with a handful of the treacherous hay at the mud that plastered its wisp of skirt. It had the gallantest air of assuring itself that nothing on earth should induce it to cry; though its eyes, as it lifted them to Justin again, had that shimmering brilliance that only unshed tears can give. But it returned to the charge.