Her face fell a bit. "I came to play at them with you," she said. "Your nurse thought maybe you'd like to, for a while. Are you too sick to play?" she continued, anxiously; "or too tired, or too busy?" How seldom are any of us too sick to play; or too tired, or too busy! "I am not," I assured my small caller. "I should enjoy playing. What shall we begin with?" I supplemented, glancing again toward the toy-bestrewn cot. "Oh, there are ever so many things!" the little girl said. "But," she went on hesitatingly, "_your_ things--perhaps you'd like--might I look at them first?" Most evident among these things of mine was a small tree, bedizened, after the German fashion, with gilded nuts, fantastically shaped candies, and numerous tiny boxes, gayly tied with tinsel ribbons. "What's in the boxes--presents or jokes?" the little girl questioned. "Have you looked?" "I hadn't got that far, when you came," I told her; "but I rather _think_--jokes." "_I'd_ want to _know_" she suggested. When I bade her examine them for me, she said: "Let's play I am Santa Claus and you are a little girl. I'll hand you the boxes, and you open them." We did this, with much mutual enjoyment. The boxes, to my amusement and her delight, contained miniature pewter dogs and cats and dolls and dishes. "Why," my little companion exclaimed, "they aren't _jokes_; they are _real presents_! They will be _just_ right to have when _little_ children come to see you!" When the last of the boxes had been opened and my other less juvenile "things" surveyed, the child turned to her own treasures. "There are the two puzzles," she said, "and there is the big doll that can say 'Papa' and 'Mamma,' and there is the paper doll, with lovely patterns and pieces to make more clothes out of for it, and there is a game papa just _loved_. Perhaps you'd like to play _that_ best, too, 'cause you are sick, too?" she said tentatively. I assented, and the little girl arranged the game on the table beside my bed, and explained its "rules" to me. We played at it most happily until my nurse, coming in, told my new-made friend that she must "say 'Good- bye' now." My visitor at once collected her toys and prepared to go. At the door she turned. "Good-bye," she said, again dropping her prim courtesy. "I have had a very pleasant time." "So have I!" I exclaimed. And I had had. "She was so entertaining," I said to my nurse, "and her game was so interesting!" "It is not an uncommon game," my nurse remarked, with a smile; "and she is just an ordinary, nice child!" America is full of ordinary, nice children who beguile their elders into playing with them games that are not uncommon. How much "pleasant time" is thereby spent! "Where do American children learn to expect grown people to play with them?" an Englishwoman once asked me. "In the kindergarten?"