nto my habits. She was an adept in finding
birds' nests and wild honey; and though she would not consent to my
taking the eggs, she had not the same compunction about the honey,
and she only regretted with me that we could not be exactly like St.
John, as Graylingham Wilderness yielded no locusts to eat with the
honey. Winifred, though the most healthy of children, had a passion
for the deserted church on the cliffs, and for the desolate
churchyard.

It was one of those flint and freestone churches that are sprinkled
along the coast. Situated as it was at the back of a curve cut by the
water into the end of a peninsula running far into the sea, the tower
looked in the distance like a lighthouse. I observed after the first
day of our meeting that Winifred never would mount the tower steps
again. And I knew why. So delicate were her feelings, so acute did
her kind little heart make her, that she would not mount steps which
I could never mount.

Not that Winifred looked upon me as her little lover. There was not
much of the sentimental in her. Once when I asked her on the sands if
I might be her lover, she took an entirely practical view of the
question, and promptly replied 'certumly,' adding, however, like the
wise little woman I always found her, that she 'wasn't _quite_ sure
she knew what a lover was, but if it was anything _very_ nice she
should certumly like _me_ to be it.'

It was the child's originality of manner that people found so
captivating. One of her many little tricks and ways of an original
quaintness was her habit of speaking of herself in the third person,
like the merest baby. 'Winifred likes this,' 'Winifred doesn't like
that,' were phrases that had an irresistible fascination for me.

Another fascinating characteristic of hers was connected with her
superstitions. Whenever on parting with her I exclaimed, as I often
did. 'Oh, what a lovely day we have had, Winifred!' she would look
expectantly in my eyes, murmuring, 'And--and--' This meant that I
was to say. 'And shall have many more such days,' as though there
were a prophetic power in words.

She talked with entire seriousness of having seen in a place called
Fairy Glen in Wales the Tylwyth Teg. And when I told her of Oberon
and Titania, and _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, whose acquaintance I
had made through Lamb's _Tales from Shakespeare_, she said that one
bright moonlight night she, in the company of two of her Gypsy
playmates, Rhona Boswel