then
Bala retires into herself and turns upon all foolish insistence a face
that is a blank. If this point is passed, the dark eyes can flash. But
such revealings are rare.

When Bala was something under three, she was very tender-hearted. One
evening, after the first rains had flooded the pools and revived the
mosquitoes, the nursery wall was the scene of many executions; and Bala
could not bear it. "Sittie, don't kill the poor puchies!" she said
pitifully; and Sittie, much touched, stopped to comfort and
explain. The other babies were delighting in the slaughter, pointing out
with glee each detested "puchie"; but Bala is not like the other babies.
Later, the ferocious instinct common to most young animals asserted
itself in a relish for the horrible, which rather contradicted the
mosquito incident. Bala visibly gloats over the gory head of Goliath,
and intensely admires David as he operates upon it. Her favourite part
of the story about his encounter with the lion is the suggestive
sentence, "I caught him by the beard"; and Bala loves to show you
exactly how he did it. But then that is different from seeing it done;
and after all it is only a story, and it happened long ago.

I have told how the ignorant once called Bala prosaic. Bala knows
nothing of poetry, but is full of the little seeds of that strange and
wonderful plant; and the time to get to know her is when the evening sky
is a golden blaze, or glows with that mystic glory which wakens
something within us and makes it stir and speak.

"God has not lighted His fire to-night," she said wistfully one evening
when the West was colourless; but when that fire is lighted she stands
and gazes satisfied. "What does God do when His fire goes out?" was a
question on one such evening, as the mountains darkened in the passing
of the after-glow; and then: "Why does He not light it every night?"

"Amma! I have looked into Heaven!" she said suddenly to me after a long
silence. "I have seen quite in, and I know what it is like." "What is it
like? Can you tell me?" and the child's voice answered dreamily: "It was
shining, very shining." Then with animation, in broken but vivid Tamil:
"Oh, it was beautiful! all a garden like our garden, only bigger, and
there were flowers and flowers and flowers!"--here words failed to
describe the number, and a comprehensive sweep of the hand served
instead. "And our dolls can walk there. They never can down here, poor
things! And Jesus p