But gradually the atmosphere of her mind seems restored; the fogs of envy and curiosity begin to clear off--she goes over the game of make-believe, how she was in turn each of the Four . . . but no! the miasma is still in the air, and she's "tired of fooling," and New Year's Day is over, and ill or well, _she_ must be content. . . . Even her lily's asleep, but she will wake it up, and show it the friend she has plucked for it--the flower she gathered as she passed the house on the hill. . . . Alas! even the flower seems infected. She compares it, "this pampered thing," this double hearts-ease of the garden, with the wild growth, and once more Zanze comes to mind--isn't she like the pampered blossom? And if there were a king of the flowers, "and a girl-show held in his bowers," which would he like best, the Zanze or the Pippa? . . . No: nothing will conquer her dejection; fancies will not do, awakening sleepy lilies will not do-- "Oh what a drear dark close to my poor day! How could that red sun drop in that black cloud?" and despairingly she accepts the one truth that seems to confront her: "Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's;" the larks and thrushes and blackbirds have had their hour; owls and bats and such-like things rule now . . . and listlessly she begins to undress herself. She is so alone; she has nothing but fancies to play with--this morning's, for instance, of being anyone she liked. She had played her game, had kept it up loyally with herself all day--what was the good? "Now, one thing I should like to really know: How near I ever might approach all those I only fancied being, this long day: Approach, I mean, so as to touch them, so As to . . . in some way . . . move them--if you please, Do good or evil to them some slight way. For instance, if I wind Silk to-morrow, my silk may bind And border Ottima's cloak's hem . . ." Sitting on her bed, undressed, the solitary child thus broods. No nearer than that can she get--her silk might border Ottima's cloak's hem. . . . But she cannot endure this dejection: back to her centre of gaiety, trust, and courage Pippa must somehow swing--and how shall she achieve it? There floats into her memory the hymn which she had murmured in the morning-- "All service ranks the same with God." But even this can help her only a little-- "True in some sense or other, I suppose . . ." She lies down; she can pray no more than that; the hymn no doubt is right, "some way or other," and with its message thus almost mocking in her ears, she falls asleep--the lonely little girl who has saved four souls to-day, and does not know, will never know; but will be again, to-morrow perhaps, when that sad talk on the church steps is faded from her memory, the gay, brave, trustful spirit who, by merely being that, had sung her Four Happiest Ones up toward "God in his heaven." FOOTNOTES: