There, one afternoon, after drinking my tea I walked away to a good distance on the roof and sat down to smoke a cigarette, and presently saw a charming-looking child come dancing out from among the tea-drinkers. Round and round she whirled, heedless of the presence of all those people, happy and free and wild as a lamb running a race with itself on some green flowery down under the wide sky. And by-and-by she came near and was pirouetting round my chair, when I spoke to her, and congratulated her on having had a nice holiday at the seaside. One knew it from her bare brown legs. Oh yes, she said, it was a nice holiday at Bognor, and she had enjoyed it very much. "Particularly the paddling," I remarked. No, there was no paddling--her mother wouldn't let her paddle. "What a cruel mother!" I said, and she laughed merrily, and we talked a little longer, and then seeing her about to go, I said, "you must be just seven years old." "No, only five," she replied. "Then," said I, "you must be a wonderfully clever child." "Oh yes, I know I'm clever," she returned quite naturally, and away she went, spinning over the wide space, and was presently lost in the crowd. A few minutes later a pleasant-looking but dignified lady came out from among the tea-drinkers and bore down directly on me. "I hear," she said, "you've been talking to my little girl, and I want you to know I was very sorry I couldn't let her paddle. She was just recovering from whooping-cough when I took her to the seaside, and I was afraid to let her go in the water." I commended her for her prudence, and apologised for having called her cruel, and after a few remarks about her charming child, she went her way. And now I have no sooner done with this little girl than another cometh up as a flower in my memory and I find I'm compelled to break off. There are too many for me. It is true that the child's beautiful life is a brief one, like that of the angel-insect, and may be told in a paragraph; yet if I were to write only as many of them as there are "Lives" in Plutarch it would still take an entire book--an octavo of at least three hundred pages. But though I can't write the book I shall not leave the subject just yet, and so will make a pause here, to continue the subject in the next sketch, then the next to follow, and probably the next after that. XVII MILLICENT AND ANOTHER They were two quite small maidies, aged respectively four and six years with some odd months in each case. They are older now and have probably forgotten the stranger to whom they gave their fresh little hearts, who presently left their country never to return; for all this happened a long time ago--I think about three years. In a way they were rivals, yet had never seen one another, perhaps never will, since they inhabit two villages more than a dozen miles apart in a wild, desolate, hilly district of West Cornwall.