I leant
against the frame of the door, sheltered from the wet by a small tiled
portico over my head, to wait for the storm to pass before getting on
my bicycle. Then the innkeeper's child, aged five, came out and placed
herself against the door-frame on the other side. We regarded one
another with a good deal of curiosity, for she was a queer-looking
little thing. Her head, big for her size and years, was as perfectly
round as a Dutch cheese, and her face so thickly freckled that it was
all freckles; she had confluent freckles, and as the spots and blotches
were of different shades, one could see that they overlapped like the
scales of a fish. Her head was bound tightly round with a piece of
white calico, and no hair appeared under it.
Just to open the conversation, I remarked that she was a little girl
rich in freckles.
"Yes, I know," she returned, "there's no one in the town with such a
freckled face."
"And that isn't all," I went on. "Why is your head in a night-cap or a
white cloth as if you wanted to hide your hair? or haven't you got
any?"
"I can tell you about that," she returned, not in the least resenting
my personal remarks. "It is because I've had ringworms. My head is
shaved and I'm not allowed to go to school."
"Well," I said, "all these unpleasant experiences - ringworm, shaved
head, freckles, and expulsion from school as an undesirable person - do
not appear to have depressed you much. You appear quite happy."
She laughed good-humouredly, then looked up out of her blue eyes as if
asking what more I had to say.
Just then a small girl about thirteen years old passed us - a child with
a thin anxious face burnt by the sun to a dark brown, and deep-set,
dark blue, penetrating eyes. It was a face to startle one; and as she
went by she stared intently at the little freckled girl.
Then I, to keep the talk going, said I could guess the sort of life
that child led.
"What sort of life does she lead?" asked Freckles.
She was, I said, a child from some small farm in the neighbourhood, and
had a very hard life, and was obliged to do a great deal more work
indoors and out than was quite good for her at her tender age. "But I
wonder why she stared at you?" I concluded.
"Did she stare at me! - Why did she stare?"
"I suppose it was because she saw you, a mite of a child, with a
nightcap on her head, standing here at the door of the inn talking to a
stranger just like some old woman."
She laughed again, and said it was funny for a child of five to be
called an old woman. Then, with a sudden change to gravity, she assured
me that I had been quite right in what I had said about that little
girl. She lived with her parents on a small farm, where no maid was
kept, and the little girl did as much work or more than any maid. She
had to take the cows to pasture and bring them back; she worked in the
fields and helped in the cooking and washing, and came every day to the
town with a basket of butter, and eggs, which she had to deliver at a
number of houses. Sometimes she came twice in a day, usually in a pony-
cart, but when the pony was wanted by her father she had to come on
foot with the basket, and the farm was three miles out. On Sunday she
didn't come, but had a good deal to do at home.
"Ah, poor little slave! No wonder she gazed at you as she did; - she was
thinking how sweet your life must be with people to love and care for
you and no hard work to do."
"And was that what made her stare at me, and not because I had a
nightcap on and was like an old woman talking to a stranger?" This
without a smile.
"No doubt. But you seem to know a great deal about her. Now I wonder if
you can tell me something about this beautiful young lady with an
umbrella coming towards us? I should much like to know who she is - and
I should like to call on her."
"Yes, I can tell you all about her. She is Miss Eva Langton, and lives
at the White House. You follow the street till you get out of the town
where there is a pond at this end of the common, and just a little the
other side of the pond there are big trees, and behind the trees a
white gate. That's the gate of the White House, only you can't see it
because the trees are in the way. Are you going to call on her?"
I explained that I did not know her, and though I wished I did because
she was so pretty, it would not perhaps be quite right to go to her
house to see her.
"I'm sorry you're not going to call, she's such a nice young lady.
Everybody likes her." And then, after a few moments, she looked up with
a smile, and said, "Is there anything else I can tell you about the
people of the town? There's a man going by in the rain with a lot of
planks on his head - would you like to know who he is and all about
him?"
"Oh yes, certainly," I replied.
