"I kept Thumbeline in the kennel for the whole winter. She seemed happy enough there with the dogs, and, of course, she had had Florrie, too, though I did not find that out until the spring. I don't doubt, now, that if I had kept her in there altogether she would have been perfectly contented.
"The first time I saw Florrie with her I was amazed. It was a Sunday morning. There was our four-year-old child standing at the wire, pressing herself against it, and Thumbeline close to her. Their faces almost touched; their fingers were interlaced; I am certain that they were speaking to each other in their own fashion, by flashes, without words. I watched them for a bit; I saw Bran come and sit up on his haunches and join in. He looked from one to another, and all about; and then he saw me.
"Now that is how I know that they were all three in communication; because, the very next moment, Florrie turned round and ran to me, and said in her pretty baby-talk, 'Talking to Bran. Florrie talking to Bran.' If this was wilful deceit it was most accomplished. It could not have been better done. 'And who else were you talking to, Florrie?' I said. She fixed her round blue eyes upon me, as if in wonder, then looked away and said shortly, 'No one else.' And I could not get her to confess or admit then or at any time afterward that she had any cognisance at all of the fairy in Bran's kennel, although their communications were daily, and often lasted for hours at a time. I don't know that it makes things any better, but I have thought sometimes that the child believed me to be as insensible to Thumbeline as her mother was. She can only have believed it at first, of course, but that may have prompted her to a concealment which she did not afterwards care to confess to.
"Be this as it may, Florrie, in fact, behaved with Thumbeline exactly as the two dogs did. She made no attempt to catch her at her circlings and wheelings about the kennel, nor to follow her wonderful dances, nor (in her presence) to imitate them. But she was (like the dogs) aware of nobody else when under the spell of Thumbeline's personality; and when she had got to know her she seemed to care for nobody else at all. I ought, no doubt, to have foreseen that and guarded against it.