"Oh yes, they teach me something!" Then dropping her head a little on
one side and lifting her little hands she began practising scales on
the bar of her pram. Then, looking at me with a half-smile on her lips,
she said: "That's what they teach me."
After a little further conversation she told me she was from London,
and was down with her people for their holiday.
I said it seemed strange to me she should be having a holiday so late
in the season. "Look," I said, "at that cold grey sea and the great
stretch of sand with only one group of two or three children left on it
with their little buckets and spades."
"Yes," she said, in a meditative way; "it is very late." Then, after a
pause, she turned towards me with an expression in her face which said
plainly enough: I am now going to give you a little confidential
information. Her words were: "The fact is we are just waiting for the
baby."
"Oh!" screamed the lady in black. "Why have you said such a thing! You
must not say such things!"
And again the child turned her head and looked earnestly, inquiringly
at the lady, trying, as one could see from her face, to understand why
she was not to say such a thing. But now she was not sure of her ground
as on the other occasion of being rebuked.
