I dropped my face in the crook of my arm and cried--silently, because to cry aloud seemed always to have about it a kind of nakedness; but I cried sorely, pantingly, with aching throat, and tried to think it out. What was this difference? I had heard them say in the house that my head was large, my hair too long to let me be healthy; and the four Eversleys always wanted me to shut my eyes so that I should look dead. But it was something other than these. Maybe--I shall never forget the grip of that fear--maybe I was not human. Maybe I was Adopted. I had no clear idea what Adopted meant, but my impression was that it meant not to have been born at all. That was it. I was like the apple-blossoms that would never be apples. I was just a Pretend little girl, a kind of secret one, somebody who could never, never be the same as the rest. I turned from that deep afternoon and ran for the wood-pile where I had a hiding-place. Down the path I met Mother and clung to her. “Mother, Mother!” I sobbed. “Am I adopted?” “No, dear,” she said seriously. “You are mine. What is it?” “Promise me I’m not!” I begged. “I promise,” she said. “Who has been talking to you? You little lamb, come in the house,” she added. “You’re tired out, playing.” I went with her. But the moment had entered me. I was not like the rest. I said it over, and every time it hurt. There is no more passionate believer in democracy than a child. Across the street Delia was sitting on the gate-post, ostentatiously eating chocolate layer cake, and with her free hand twisting into a curl the end of her short braid. Between us there seemed to have revealed itself a gulf, life-wide. Had Delia always known about me? Did the Rodman girls know? And Calista? The four Eversleys must know--this was why they laughed so.... But I remember how, most of all, I hoped that Mary Elizabeth did not know--yet. From that day I faced the truth: I was different. I was somehow not really-truly. And it seemed to me that nothing could ever be done about it. VII THE PRINCESS ROMANCIA That night I could not go to sleep with the knowledge. If only I, as I am now, might have sat on the edge of the bed and told a story to me as I was then! I am always wishing that we two might have known each other--I as I am now and I as I was then. We should have been so much more interested in each other than anybody else could ever be. I can picture us looking curiously at each other through the dark, and each would have wished to be the other--how hard we would have wished that. But neither of us would have got it, as sometimes happens with wishes. Looking back on that night, and knowing how much I wanted to be like the rest, I think this would be the story that I, as I am now, would have told that Little Me. * * * * *