“Funny little monkey!” said my lily friend, passively allowing the embrace.

“Me too,” said Edward, bending down.  Then I carried my bundle back satisfied.

The next day Felipa and I in secret began our labors:  hers consisted in worrying me out of my life and spoiling material—­mine in keeping my temper and trying to sew.  The result, however, was satisfactory, never mind how we got there.  I led Christine out one afternoon:  Edward followed.  “Do you like tableaux?” I said.  “There is one I have arranged for you.”

Felipa sat on the edge of the low, square-curbed Spanish well, and Drollo stood behind her, his great yellow body and solemn head serving as a background.  She wore a brown petticoat barred with bright colors, and a little scarlet bodice fitting her slender waist closely; a chemisette of soft cream-color with loose sleeves covered her neck and arms, and set off the dark hues of her cheeks and eyes; and around her curly hair a red scarf was twisted, its fringed edges forming a drapery at the back of the head, which, more than anything else, seemed to bring out the latent character of her face.  Brown moccasins, red stockings and a quantity of bright beads completed her costume.

“By Jove!” cried Edward, “the little thing is almost pretty.”

Felipa understood this, and a great light came into her face:  forgetting her pose, she bounded forward to Christine’s side.  “I am pretty, then?” she said with exultation:  “I am pretty, then, after all?  For now you yourself have said it—­have said it.”

“No, Felipa,” I interposed, “the gentleman said it.”  For the child had a curious habit of confounding the two identities which puzzled me then as now.  But this afternoon, this happy afternoon, she was content, for she was allowed to sit at Christine’s feet and look up into her fair face unmolested.  I was forgotten, as usual.

“It is always so,” I said to myself.  But cynicism, as Mr. Aldrich says, is a small brass field-piece that eventually bursts and kills the artilleryman.  I knew this, having been blown up myself more than once; so I went back to my painting and forgot the world.  Our world down there on the edge of the salt marsh, however, was a small one:  when two persons went out of it there was a vacuum at once.

One morning Felipa came sadly to my side.  “They have gone away,’” she said.

“Yes, child.”

“Down to the beach to spend all the day.”

“Yes, I know it.”

“And without me!”

This was the climax.  I looked up.  The child’s eyes were dry, but there was a hollow look of disappointment in her face that made her seem old:  it was as though for an instant you caught what her old-woman face would be half a century on.

“Why did they not take me?” she said.  “I am pretty now:  she herself said it.”

“They cannot always take you, Felipa,” I replied, giving up the point as to who had said it.