I stood motionless.  I could not see her face; but there was in her whole attitude and tone the heartiest content and delight.  I moved a little to the right, hoping to see her face, without her seeing me; but the slight movement caught her ear, and in a second she had sprung aside and turned toward me.  The spell was broken.  She was no longer the queen of an air-castle, decking herself in all the rainbow hues which pleased her eye.  She was a poor beggar child, out in the rain, and a little frightened at the approach of a stranger.  She did not move away, however; but stood eying me irresolutely, with that pathetic mixture of interrogation and defiance in her face which is so often seen in the prematurely developed faces of poverty-stricken children.

“Aren’t the colors pretty?” I said.  She brightened instantly.

“Yes’m.  I’d like a goon av thit blue.”

“But you will take cold standing in the wet,” said I.  “Won’t you come under my umbrella?”

She looked down at her wet dress suddenly, as if it had not occurred to her before that it was raining.  Then she drew first one little foot and then the other out of the muddy puddle in which she had been standing, and, moving a little closer to the window, said, “I’m not jist goin’ home, mem.  I’d like to stop here a bit.”

So I left her.  But, after I had gone a few blocks, the impulse seized me to return by a cross street, and see if she were still there.  Tears sprang to my eyes as I first caught sight of the upright little figure, standing in the same spot, still pointing with the rhythmic finger to the blues and reds and yellows, and half chanting under her breath, as before, “I choose that color.”  “I choose that color.”  “I choose that color.”

I went quietly on my way, without disturbing her again.  But I said in my heart, “Little Messenger, Interpreter, Teacher!  I will remember you all my life.”

Why should days ever be dark, life ever be colorless?  There is always sun; there are always blue and scarlet and yellow and purple.  We cannot reach them, perhaps, but we can see them, if it is only “through a glass,” and “darkly,”—­still we can see them.  We can “choose” our colors.  It rains, perhaps; and we are standing in the cold.  Never mind.  If we look earnestly enough at the brightness which is on the other side of the glass, we shall forget the wet and not feel the cold.  And now and then a passer-by, who has rolled himself up in furs to keep out the cold, but shivers nevertheless,—­who has money in his purse to buy many colors, if he likes, but, nevertheless, goes grumbling because some colors are too dear for him,—­such a passer-by, chancing to hear our voice, and see the atmosphere of our content, may learn a wondrous secret,—­that pennilessness is not poverty, and ownership is not possession; that to be without is not always to lack, and to reach is not to attain; that sunlight is for all eyes that look up, and color for those who “choose.”