d a kite to fly--for all the men in that country flew kites,
and all the children,--and there she would fly a kite of her own up
into the blue air; and watching the wind carrying it farther and farther
away, would grow quite happy thinking how a day might come at last when
she would really be loved, though her queer little outside made her seem
so poor and unprofitable.

Katipah's kite was green, with blue eyes in its square face; and in
one corner it had a very small pursed-up red mouth holding a spray of
peach-blossom. She had made it herself; and to her it meant the green
world, with the blue sky over it when the spring begins to be sweet,
and there, tucked away in one corner of it, her own little warm mouth
waiting and wishing to be kissed: and out of all that wishing and
waiting the blossom of hope was springing, never to be let go.

All round her were hundreds of others flying their kites, and all had
some wish or prayer to Fortune. But Katipah's wish and prayer were only
that she might be loved.

The silver sandhills lay in loops and chains round the curve of the
blue bay, and all along them flocks of gaily coloured kites hovered and
fluttered and sprang. And, as they went up into the clear air, the wind
sighing in the strings was like the crying of a young child. "Wahoo!
wahoo!" every kite seemed to cradle the wailings of an invisible infant
as it went mounting aloft, spreading its thin apron to the wind.

"Wahoo! wahoo!" sang Katipah's blue-and-green kite, "shall I ever be
loved by anybody?" And Katipah, keeping fast hold of the string, would
watch where it mounted and looked so small, and think that surely some
day her kite would bring her the only thing she much cared about.

Katipah's next-door neighbour had everything that her own lonely heart
most wished for: not only had she a husband, but a fine baby as well.
Yet she was such a jealous, cross-grained body that she seemed to get
no happiness out of the fortune Heaven had sent her. Husband and child
seemed both to have caught the infection of her bitter temper: all day
and night beating and brawling went on; there seemed no peace in that
house.

But for all that the woman, whose name was Bimsha, was quite proud of
being a wife and a mother: and in the daytime, when her man was away,
she would look over the fence and laugh at Katipah, crying boastfully,
"Don't think you will ever have a husband, Katipah: you are too poor and
unprofitable! Look at me,