Ww. V.

When she had at last tired herself with
angelic visits and thrown aside her fern
wings, she returned to me and wanted to
know if I would play at shop. No, I would
not play at shop; I would be neither pur-
chaser nor proprietor, the lady she called
“Cash” nor the stately gentleman she called
“Sion.” Would I be a king, then, and
refuse my daughter to her (she would be a
prince) unless: she built a castle in a single
night; “better’n’t” she bring her box of
bricks and the dominoes? No, like Cesar,
I put by the crown. She took my refusals
cheerfully. On the whole, she is tractable
in these matters. “Fathers,” she once told
me, “know better than little girls, don’t
they?” “Oh, dear, no! how could they?
Fathers have to go into the city; they don’t
go to school like little girls.” Doubtless
there was something in that, but she per-
sisted, ‘Well, even if little girls do go to
school, fathers are wiser and know best.”
From which one father at least may derive
encouragement. Well, would I blow soap-
bubbles?

I think it was the flying thistledown in

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