XXX THE BLUNT LEAD-PENCIL 310 XXXI THE MAN WITH THE SWORD 322 XXXII DARKNESS 329 XXXIII A STRANGE STEP 336 XXXIV THE END WHICH WAS THE BEGINNING 341 MY LITTLE SISTER CHAPTER I FIRST IMPRESSIONS She is very fair, my little sister. I mean, not only she is good to look upon. I mean that she is white and golden, and always seemed to bring a shining where she went. * * * * * I have not been able, I see, to set down these few sentences without touching the quick. I have used the present and then fallen to the past. I say "is" and then, she "seemed." And I do not know whether I should have written "was" or "seems." And that, in sum, is my story. * * * * * We were both so young when we went to Duncombe that even I cannot clearly remember what life was like before. Whether there was really some image left upon my mind of India, or my father in a cocked hat, looking very grand on a horse, or whether these were a child's idea of what a cavalry officer's daughter must have seen, I cannot tell. I do not think I imagined the confused picture of dark faces and a ship. My first clear impression of the world is the same as Bettina's. A house, which we did not yet know as small, set in a place which still is wide and green. As far back as we remember it at all, we remember roaming this expanse; always, in the beginning, with our mother. A region where we played with the infinite possibilities of existence--from the discovery of a wheat-ear's hidden nest, to the apparition of a pack of hounds on the horizon, followed by men in red coats and ladies in sober habit, on horses that came galloping out of the vague, up over the green rim of the world, jumping the five-barred gate into Little Klaus's meadow, and vanishing in a pleasant fanfare of horn, of baying and hallooing, leaving us standing there in a stirred and wonderful stillness. We seldom met anyone afoot in those days except, now and then, the cottager who lived in a thatched hut down in one of the multitude of hollows. We called him "Kleiner Klaus," because he had one horse of his own, and because sometimes in the paddock four others grazed and kicked their heels. And he was little and shrewd-looking, and used to smile at Bettina. To be sure, everyone smiled at Bettina. And Bettina would show her dimple, and nod her shining curls, and pass by like a small Princess, scattering gold of gladness and goodwill. Though we children looked on Kleiner Klaus as a friend, years went by before we dared so much as say good-morning to him. Anyone else found at large in our green dominions was an enemy.