'And soft, is it not? Feel it. When I was a little child, it was much lighter--almost like gold. I used to be glad to hear people say, "What beautiful hair that child has got!"' 'It will get darker as you grow older.' 'I don't want it to. I'll sit in the sun as much as ever I can, so that it sha'n't grow darker.' 'Why, my----' 'Dear. Say it, please!' 'My dear, have you been told that that is the way to keep hair light?' 'No, but I think it is. It must be the best way.' This with a positive air, as if contradiction were out of the question. 'If you are so fond of your hair, what made you say just now that you wished you were a boy?' 'Because I do wish it. I think it is a shame. Persons ought to have their choice before they're born, whether they would be boys or girls.' 'My dear!' 'Yes, they ought to have, and you can't help agreeing with me. Then I should have been a boy, and things would have been different. All that I should have wanted would have been to grow tall and strong. Men have no business to be little. But as I am a girl, I must grow as pretty as I can.' And she smoothed her hair from her forehead with her small white hands, and looked at us and smiled with her eyes and her lips. All this was done with such an utter absence of conscious vanity that it deepened my admiration of her, and I was ready to take sides with her against the world in any proposition she might choose to lay down. That she saw this expressed in my face, and that she, in an easy graceful way, received the homage I paid her, as being naturally her due, and did her best--again without conscious artifice--to strengthen it, were as plainly conveyed by her demeanour towards me as though she had expressed it in so many words. It struck me as strange that my mother did not ask her any questions concerning herself, not even her name, nor where she lived, nor what was her errand; and although all of these questions, and especially the first, were on the tip of my tongue a dozen times, I did not have the courage to shape them in words. My mother not saying anything more to her, she turned towards me. 'Are you generally rude to girls--I mean to young ladies?' 'No,' I protested warmly, ransacking my mind for the clue. 'You were to me just now. You said that I spoke nonsense.' 'I am very sorry,' I stammered; I beg your pardon; but when you said your box walked here----' 'You shouldn't have asked foolish questions. Never mind; we are friends again.' She gave me her hand, quite as though we had had a serious quarrel, which was now made up. Then she nestled a little closer to me, and proceeded with 'Picciola.'