As soon as dawn came over the waste and shone on the farmer’s house, she looked from the window towards the glittering waters, and saw the inner beauty of the marsh. For the Wild Things only love the marsh and know its haunts, but now she perceived the mystery of its distances and the glamour of its perilous pools, with their fair and deadly mosses, and felt the marvel of the North Wind who comes dominant out of unknown icy lands, and the wonder of that ebb and flow of life when the wildfowl whirl in at evening to the marshlands and at dawn pass out to sea. And she knew that over her head above the farmer’s house stretched wide Paradise, where perhaps God was now imagining a sunrise while angels played low on lutes, and the sun came rising up on the world below to gladden fields and marsh. And all that heaven thought, the marsh thought too; for the blue of the marsh was as the blue of heaven, and the great cloud shapes in heaven became the shapes in the marsh, and through each ran momentary rivers of purple, errant between banks of gold. And the stalwart army of reeds appeared out of the gloom with all their pennons waving as far as the eye could see. And from another window she saw the vast cathedral gathering its ponderous strength together, and lifting it up in towers out of the marshlands. She said, ‘I will never, never leave the marsh.’ An hour later she dressed with great difficulty and went down to eat the second meal of her life. The farmer and his wife were kindly folk, and taught her how to eat. ‘I suppose the gipsies don’t have knives and forks,’ one said to the other afterwards. After breakfast the farmer went and saw the Dean, who lived near his cathedral, and presently returned and brought back to the Dean’s house the little Wild Thing with the new soul. ‘This is the lady,’ said the farmer. ‘This is Dean Murnith.’ Then he went away. ‘Ah,’ said the Dean, ‘I understand you were lost the other night in the marshes. It was a terrible night to be lost in the marshes.’ ‘I love the marshes,’ said the little Wild Thing with the new soul. ‘Indeed! How old are you?’ said the Dean. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘You must know about how old you are,’ he said. ‘Oh, about ninety,’ she said, ‘or more.’ ‘Ninety years!’ exclaimed the Dean. ‘No, ninety centuries,’ she said; ‘I am as old as the marshes.’ Then she told her story—how she had longed to be a human and go and worship God, and have a soul and see the beauty of the world, and how all the Wild Things had made her a soul of gossamer and mist and music and strange memories. ‘But if this is true,’ said Dean Murnith, ‘this is very wrong. God cannot have intended you to have a soul. ‘What is your name?’ ‘I have no name,’ she answered. ‘We must find a Christian name and a surname for you. What would you like to be called?’ ‘Song of the Rushes,’ she said. ‘That won’t do at all,’ said the Dean.