Children -- Fiction; Fairy tales; Girls -- Fiction; Play -- Fiction
“Wait, Shadow. I am listening. I can hear the speeding of many feet.
And I think that the miracle has begun.”
It was true that all through the City there was the speeding of many
feet, and on one errand. Wires and messengers were busy, automobiles
were busy, blue-coated men were busy, and all of them were doing the
same thing: Looking for Littlegirl. Busiest of all was the Blue Linen
Lady, who felt herself and nobody else responsible for Littlegirl’s
loss.
“It is too dreadful,” she kept saying over and over, “I had her with
me. She gave me my chance, and I didn’t take it. If anything has
happened to her, I shall never forgive myself.”
“That’s the way people always talk _afterward_,” said the Earth’s
Shadow. “Why don’t they ever talk that way before? I’d ask the
Uttermost Spaces, but I know they don’t know.”
But the wise Earth only listened and made to flow to the Blue Linen
Lady’s heart an old longing. And when they had traced Littlegirl as far
as the park--for it seemed that many of the busy Skirts and Coats and
Voices had noticed her, only they were so very busy--the Blue Linen
Lady herself went into the park, and it was the light of her automobile
that flashed white on the glimmering frock of Littlegirl.
Littlegirl was wakened, as never before within her memory she had been
wakened, by tender arms about her, lifting her, and soft lips kissing
her, many and many a time. And waking so, in the strange, great Dark,
with the new shapes of trees above her and tenderness wrapping her
round, and an in-the-middle-of-the-night kiss on her lips, Littlegirl
could think of but one thing that had happened:--
“Oh, I’m _glad_ I died--I’m _glad_ I died!” she said.
“You haven’t died, you little thing!” cried the Blue Linen Lady.
“You’re alive--and if they’ll let you stay, you’re never going to leave
me. I’ve made up my mind to _that_. Come--come, dear.”
Littlegirl lay quite still, too happy to speak or think. For somebody
had said “dear,” had even said “Come, dear.” And it didn’t mean a
little girl away ahead, or away back, or in an automobile. _It meant
her._
The Earth’s Shadow brooded over the two and helped them to be very near.
“It’s worth keeping up with you all this time,” Shadow said to the
Earth, “to see things like this. Even the Uttermost Spaces are touched.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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