Perhaps
the very sound that awoke him was the one he wished to shun; at the next
step it became more distinct,--a child's voice singing some tuneless
song; and directly a tiny apparition appeared before him, as if it had
taken shape, with its wide, light eyes and corn-silk hair, from the most
wan and watery of sunbeams. But what had a child to do in this paradise,
thought he, and from whence did it come? Impossible to imagine. Her
garments, of rich material, hung freshly torn, it may be, but in shreds;
her skin, if that of some fair and delicate nursling, was stained with
berries and smeared with soil; she seemed to have no destination; and
after surveying him a moment, she mounted a fallen tree, and, bending
and swinging forward over a bough, still surveyed him.
"Ah, ha!" said Mr. Roger Raleigh; "what have we here?"
The child still looked in his face, but vouchsafed, in her swinging, no
reply.
"What is the little lady's name?" he asked then.
This query, apparently more comprehensible, elicited a response. She
informed him that her name was "Dymom, Pink, and Beauty."
"Indeed! And anything else?"
"Rose Pose," she added, as if soliciting the aid of memory by lifting
her hands near her temples.
"Is that all?"
"Little silly Daffodilly."
"No more?"
"Rite."
"Rite,--ah, that is it! Rite what?"
"Rite!" said the child, authoritatively, bringing down her foot and
shaking back her hair.
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