Millicent and Another

They were two quite small maidies, aged respectively four and six years
with some odd months in each case. They are older now and have probably
forgotten the stranger to whom they gave their fresh little hearts, who
presently left their country never to return; for all this happened a
long time ago--I think about three years. In a way they were rivals,
yet had never seen one another, perhaps never will, since they inhabit
two villages more than a dozen miles apart in a wild, desolate, hilly
district of West Cornwall.

Let me first speak of Millicent, the elder. I knew Millicent well,
having at various times spent several weeks with her in her parents'
house, and she, an only child, was naturally regarded as the most
important person in it. In Cornwall it is always so. Tall for her
years, straight and slim, with no red colour on her cheeks; she had
brown hair and large serious grey eyes; those eyes and her general air
of gravity, and her forehead, which was too broad for perfect beauty,
made me a little shy of her and we were not too intimate. And, indeed,
that feeling on my part, which made me a little careful and ceremonious
in our intercourse, seemed to be only what she expected of me. One day
in a forgetful or expansive moment I happened to call her "Millie,"
which caused her to look to me in surprise. "Don't you like me to call
you Millie--for short?" I questioned apologetically. "No," she returned
gravely; "it is not my name--my name is Millicent." And so it had to be
to the end of the chapter.

Then there was her speech--I wondered how she got it! For it was unlike
that of the people she lived among of her own class. No word-clipping
and slurring, no "naughty English" as old Nordin called it, and sing-
song intonation with her! She spoke with an almost startling
distinctness, giving every syllable its proper value, and her words
were as if they had been read out of a nicely written book.

Nevertheless, we got on fairly well together, meeting on most days at
tea-time in the kitchen, when we would have nice sober little talks and
look at her lessons and books and pictures, sometimes unbending so far
as to draw pigs on her slate with our eyes shut, and laughing at the
result just like ordinary persons.

It was during my last visit, after an absence of some months from that
part of the country, that one evening on coming in I was told by her
mother that Millicent had gone for the milk, and that I would have to
wait for my tea till she came back. Now the farm that supplied the milk
was away at the other end of the village, quite half a mile, and I went
to meet her, but did not see her until I had walked the whole distance,
when just as I