A Little Girl Lost

Yet once more, O ye little girls, I come to bid you a last good-bye--a
very last one this time. Not to you, living little girls, seeing that I
must always keep a fair number of you on my visiting list, but to a
fascinating theme I had to write about. For I did really and truly
think I had quite finished with it, and now all at once I find myself
compelled by a will stronger than my own to make this one further
addition. The will of a little girl who is not present and is lost to
me--a wordless message from a distance, to tell me that she is not to
be left out of this gallery. And no sooner has her message come than I
find there are several good reasons why she should be included, the
first and obvious one being that she will be a valuable acquisition, an
ornament to the said gallery. And here I will give a second reason, a
very important one (to the psychological minded at all events), but not
the most important of all, for that must be left to the last.

In the foregoing impressions of little girls I have touched on the
question of the child's age when that "little agitation in the brain
called thought," begins. There were two remarkable cases given; one,
the child who climbed upon my knee to amaze and upset me by her
pessimistic remarks about life; the second, my little friend Nesta--
that was her name and she is still on my visiting list--who revealed
her callow mind striving to grasp an abstract idea--the idea of time
apart from some visible or tangible object. Now these two were aged
five years; but what shall we say of the child, the little girl-child
who steps out of the cradle, so to speak, as a being breathing
thoughtful breath?

It makes me think of the cradle as the cocoon or chrysalis in which, as
by a miracle (for here natural and supernatural seem one and the same),
the caterpillar has undergone his transformation and emerging spreads
his wings and forthwith takes his flight a full-grown butterfly with
all its senses and faculties complete.

Walking on the sea front at Worthing one late afternoon in late
November, I sat down at one end of a seat in a shelter, the other end
being occupied by a lady in black, and between us, drawn close up to
the seat, was a perambulator in which a little girl was seated. She
looked at me, as little girls always do, with that question--What are
you? in her large grey intelligent eyes. The expression tempted me to
address her, and I said I hoped she was quite well.

"O yes," she returned readily. "I am quite well, thank you."

"And may I know how old you are?"

"Yes, I am just three years old."

I should have thought, I said, that as she looked a strong healthy
child she would have