I remember being swung up in the air and shrieking in pretended fright, for children, sensational and dramatic little creatures, must persuade themselves there is an element of peril and adventure in their tamest diversions. Not to imagine oneself afraid is to miss the peculiar zest of enjoyment.
When I was seated gravely on his knee, my godfather asked me to spell out a few lines of his book.
"Cocks and hens--eh? Just suit a little girl from the country," he laughed, helping me to hold the book.
"I had a little dog at Mamma Cochrane's. I liked it better than cocks and hens," I protested meekly.
"Wants a dog now, does she? Queer little woman! She's still too pale, Mrs. Clement, much too pale and thin. Fretting for her Mamma Cochrane, I suppose. Well, I'll see if I can't get her a nice dog with curly hair, that'll cry 'Bow-wow' when you pull its tail. Know where China is, missy?"
I had heard of a china doll, and my Mamma Cochrane had two beautiful black-and-white china dogs. I supposed at once that China was a land where the dogs and dolls were all of china, and I wondered if the people were of china too. My godfather laughed as only a big man with a beard seems to be able to laugh. I was sure you could hear him down in the hall and up in the nursery. It was very comforting, that loud laugh, and I became instantly communicative, and told him all I knew about America and New York. He said it took a much bigger boat to go to China, which was farther off than New York, and that there were crocodiles in the rivers that ate men, and there was so much sunshine that the people were quite yellow.
After that, whenever it was unusually sunny, I was safe to astonish somebody by saying I supposed it was always like that in China. Somehow, the image of my jovial godfather was melted in a great glare of yellow light, through which yellow faces came and went, up and down long rivers, where unknown monsters, understood to be crocodiles, tossed about in a ruthless quest of man.
Mrs. Clement, the housekeeper, is another portrait that stands out in luminous relief from a crowd of unremembered faces. Her dress was seemingly as unalterable as a uniform. It consisted of a black silk gown, very wide at the base and gathered in at a slim waist, a white lawn fichu trimmed with delicate lace, and fastened with a gold brooch containing the features of a young man with a dark moustache.