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KING PELLINORE’S LITERARY MAGAZINE

my feet in the water. It is where I go and reveling in the flowers, those
when I hunger for companionship, beautiful creatures that catch the
some one to look at, some one to talk smile of God out of the sky and
to. It is not enough--that lovely white preserve it! I gathered them, and
body painted there in the pool--but it made them into wreaths and garlands
is something, and something is better and clothed myself in them while I ate
than utter loneliness. It talks when I my luncheon--apples, of course; then I
talk; it is sad when I am sad; it sat in the shade and wished and
comforts me with its sympathy; it says, waited. But he did not come.
“Do not be downhearted, you poor But no matter. Nothing would have
friendless girl; I will be your friend.” come of it, for he does not care for
It IS a good friend to me, and my only flowers. He called them rubbish, and
one; it is my sister. cannot tell one from another, and
That first time that she forsook me! thinks it is superior to feel like that.
ah, I shall never forget that --never, He does not care for me, he does not
never. My heart was lead in my body! care for flowers, he does not care for
I said, “She was all I had, and now she the painted sky at eventide--is there
is gone!” In my despair I said, “Break, anything he does care for, except
my heart; I cannot bear my life any building shacks to coop himself up in
more!” and hid my face in my hands, from the good clean rain, and
and there was no solace for me. And thumping the melons, and sampling
when I took them away, after a little, the grapes, and fingering the fruit on
there she was again, white and the trees, to see how those properties
shining and beautiful, and I sprang are coming along?
into her arms! I laid a dry stick on the ground and
That was perfect happiness; I had tried to bore a hole in it with another
known happiness before, but it was not one, in order to carry out a scheme
like this, which was ecstasy. I never that I had, and soon I got an awful
doubted her afterward. Sometimes she fright. A thin, transparent bluish
stayed away--maybe an hour, maybe film rose out of the hole, and I
almost the whole day, but I waited and dropped everything and ran! I
did not doubt; I said, “She is busy, or thought it was a spirit, and I WAS so
she is gone on a journey, but she will frightened! But I looked back, and it
come.” And it was so: she always did. was not coming; so I leaned against a
At night she would not come if it was rock and rested and panted, and let my
dark, for she was a timid little thing; limbs go on trembling until they got
but if there was a moon she would steady again; then I crept warily back,
come. I am not afraid of the dark, but alert, watching, and ready to fly if
she is younger than I am; she was born there was occasion; and when I was
after I was. Many and many are the come near, I parted the branches of a
visits I have paid her; she is my rose-bush and peeped through--
comfort and my refuge when my life is wishing the man was about, I was
hard--and it is mainly that. looking so cunning and pretty--but the
sprite was gone. I went there, and
TUESDAY.--All the morning I was there was a pinch of delicate pink dust
at work improving the estate; and I in the hole. I put my finger in, to feel
purposely kept away from him in the it, and said OUCH! and took it out
hope that he would get lonely and again. It was a cruel pain. I put my
come. But he did not. finger in my mouth; and by standing
At noon I stopped for the day and first on one foot and then the other,
took my recreation by flitting all and grunting, I presently eased my
about with the bees and the butterflies

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