‘No, ninety centuries,’ she said; ‘I am as old as the marshes.’

Then she told her story—­how she had longed to be a human and go and worship God, and have a soul and see the beauty of the world, and how all the Wild Things had made her a soul of gossamer and mist and music and strange memories.

‘But if this is true,’ said Dean Murnith, ’this is very wrong.  God cannot have intended you to have a soul.

‘What is your name?’

‘I have no name,’ she answered.

’We must find a Christian name and a surname for you.  What would you like to be called?’

‘Song of the Rushes,’ she said.

‘That won’t do at all,’ said the Dean.

’Then I would like to be called Terrible North Wind, or Star in the Waters,’ she said.

‘No, no, no,’ said Dean Murnith; ’that is quite impossible.  We could call you Miss Rush if you like.  How would Mary Rush do?  Perhaps you had better have another name—­say Mary Jane Rush.’

So the little Wild Thing with the soul of the marshes took the names that were offered her, and became Mary Jane Rush.

‘And we must find something for you to do,’ said Dean Murnith.  ‘Meanwhile we can give you a room here.’

‘I don’t want to do anything,’ replied Mary Jane; ’I want to worship God in the cathedral and live beside the marshes.’

Then Mrs. Murnith came in, and for the rest of that day Mary Jane stayed at the house of the Dean.

And there with her new soul she perceived the beauty of the world; for it came grey and level out of misty distances, and widened into grassy fields and ploughlands right up to the edge of an old gabled town; and solitary in the fields far off an ancient windmill stood, and his honest hand-made sails went round and round in the free East Anglian winds.  Close by, the gabled houses leaned out over the streets, planted fair upon sturdy timbers that grew in the olden time, all glorying among themselves upon their beauty.  And out of them, buttress by buttress, growing and going upwards, aspiring tower by tower, rose the cathedral.

And she saw the people moving in the streets all leisurely and slow, and unseen among them, whispering to each other, unheard by living men and concerned only with bygone things, drifted the ghosts of very long ago.  And wherever the streets ran eastwards, wherever were gaps in the houses, always there broke into view the sight of the great marshes, like to some bar of music weird and strange that haunts a melody, arising again and again, played on the violin by one musician only, who plays no other bar, and he is swart and lank about the hair and bearded about the lips, and his moustache droops long and low, and no one knows the land from which he comes.

All these were good things for a new soul to see.

Then the sun set over green fields and ploughland and the night came up.  One by one the merry lights of cheery lamp-lit windows took their stations in the solemn night.