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.
