Her Birthday

June which first gave us the cue of the soap-
bubbles. What a delightful game it is; and
there is a knack, too, in blowing these
spheres of fairy glass and setting them off
on their airy flight. Till you have blown
bubbles you have no conception how full of
. waywardness and freakish currents the air is.
Oh, you who are sad at heart, or weary of
thought, or irritable with physical pain, coax,
beg, borrow, or steal a four or five year old,
and betake you to blowing bubbles in the
sunshine of your recluse garden. Let the
breeze be just a little brisk to set your
bubbles drifting. Fill some of them with
tobacco smoke, and with the wind’s help
bombard the old fisherman in his web. As
the opaline globes break and the smoke
escapes in a white puff along the grass or
among the leaves, you shall think of historic
battlefields, and muse whether the greater
game was not quite as childish as this, and
“sorefully ”’ less innocent. The charges of
smoke are only a diversion ; it is the crystal
balls which delight most. The colours of
all the gems in the world run molten through
their fragile films. And what visions they

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