"Well, the elf was born; and now comes the singular part of it. It was a wretched, frail little being, with a startling likeness to me. It was as if the evil the mother had wished me had worked on the child, and the constant thought of me stamped my features on its little face. I was working then on a Finland saga, and I do not know why it was, but the thought of that little being kept disturbing my work. It was worst in the afternoon time, when the house seemed quietest; there is always a lull then, outside and inside. Have you ever noticed that? The birds hush their singing, and the work is done. Belinda used to sit sewing in the kitchen, and the words of a hymn she used to lilt in half tones--something about joy bells ringing, children singing--floated in to me, and the very tick-tock of the old clock sounded like the rocking of wooden cradles. It made me think sometimes that it would be pleasant to hear small, pattering feet and the call of voices through the silent house; and I suppose it acted as an irritant on my imaginative faculty, for the whole room seemed filled with the spirits of little children. They seemed to dance round me with uncertain, lightsome steps, waving tiny, pink, dimpled hands, shaking sunny, flossy curls, and haunting me with their great innocent child-eyes, filled with the unconscious sadness and the infinite questioning that is oftenest seen in the gaze of children. I used to fancy something stirred in me, and the spirits of unborn little ones never to come to life in me troubled me. I was probably over-worked at the time. How we women digress! I am telling you more about myself than my white elf. "Well, trouble came to their home, and I went and offered to take it. It was an odd little thing, and when I looked at it I could see how like we were. My glasses dimmed somehow, and a lump kept rising in my throat, when it smiled up out of its great eyes and held out two bits of hands like shrivelled white rose-leaves. Such a tiny scrap it was! it was not bigger, she said, than a baby of eleven months. I suppose they can tell that as I can the date of a dialect; but I am getting wiser," with an emotional softening of her face, and quite a proud look. "A child is like one of those wonderful runic alphabets; the signs are simple, but the lore they contain is marvellous. 'She is very like you,' said the mother; 'hold her.' She was only beginning to walk. I did. You never saw such elfin ears, with strands of silk floss ringing round them, and the quaintest, darlingest wrinkles in its forehead, two long, and one short, just as I have"--putting her head forward for me to see. "The other children were strong, and the one on the road she hoped would be healthy. So I took it there and then, 'clothes and baby, cradle and all.' Yes, I have a collection of nursery rhymes from many nations; I was going to put them in a book, but I say them to the elf now.