ome and visit me?" he asked, in an inviting tone.

"Oh, yes!" and the grave little face lightened.

The blaze was brighter here than downstairs, she felt quite sure. And
the room had a more cheerful look. The table was spread with books and
papers, and, oh, the books that were on the shelves! The curious things
above them suggested India. There really was the triple-faced god she
had seen so often, carved in ivory, and another carving of a temple. She
walked slowly round and inspected them. Then she paused at a window.

"How much it rains!" she began. "I don't see how so much rain can be
made. When is it going to stop?"

"I think it will hold up this afternoon and be clear to-morrow, clear
and sunny."

"I like sunshine best. And little rains. This has been so long."

"And we haven't much to amuse a child. When it clears up we must find
some little folks. Does it seem very strange to you?"

"I haven't lived with big women much, except Rachel. And the houses are
so different. You get things about, and the servants pick them up. There
are so many servants. Sometimes there are white children, but not many.
Their mothers take them back to England. Or they die."

She uttered the last sadly, and her long lashes drooped.

He wondered a little how she had stood the climate. She looked more like
a foreigner than a native of Salem town.

"What did you do there?" He hardly knew how to talk to a little girl.

"Oh, a great many things. I went to ride in a curious sort of cart--the
natives pulled it. Then the children came and played in the court. They
threw up balls and caught them, ever so many, and they played curious
games on the stones, and acrobatic feats, and sung, and danced, and
acted stories of funny things. Then father read to me, and told me about
Salem when he was a little boy. You can't really think the grown-up
people were little, like you."

"And that one day you will be big like them."

She pushed up her sleeve. They were large and made just big enough for
her hand at the wrist, not at all like the straight, small sleeves of
the Puritan children. After surveying it a moment, she said gravely:

"I can't understand _how_ you grow. You must be pushed out all the time
by something inside."

"You have just hit it;" and he smiled approvingly. "It is the forces
inside. There is a curious factory inside of us that keeps working, day
and night, that supplies the blood, the warmth, the strength, and is
always p