A Little Girl Lost - Page 2

been able to walk and run about at the age of
three.

She replied that she could walk and run as well as any child, and that
she had her pram just to sit and rest in when tired of walking.

Then, after apologising for putting so many questions to her, I asked
her if she could tell me her name.

"My name," she said, "is Rose Mary Catherine Maude Caversham," or some
such name.

"Oh!" exclaimed the lady in black, opening her lips for the first time,
and speaking sharply. "You must not say all those names! It is enough
to say your name is Rose."

The child turned and looked at her, studying her face, and then with
heightened colour and with something like indignation in her tone, she
replied: "That _is_ my name! Why should I not tell it when I am
asked?"

The lady said nothing, and the child turned her face to me again.

I said it was a very pretty name and I had been pleased to hear it, and
glad she told it to me without leaving anything out.

Silence still on the part of the lady.

"I think," I resumed, "that you are a rather wonderful child;--have
they taught you the ABC?"

"Oh no, they don't teach me things like that--I pick all that up."

"And one and one make two--do you pick that up as well?"

"Yes, I pick that up as well."

"Then," said I, recollecting Humpty Dumpty's question in arithmetic to
Alice, "how much is one-an'-one-an'-one-an'-one-an'-one-an'-one?"--
speaking it as it should be spoken, very rapidly.

She looked at me quite earnestly for a moment, then said, "And can
_you_ tell me how much is two-an'-two-an'-two-an'-two-an'-two-an'-
two?"--and several more two's all in a rapid strain.

"No," I said, "you have turned the tables on me very cleverly. But tell
me, do they teach you nothing?"

"Oh yes, they teach me something!" Then dropping her head a little on
one side and lifting her little hands she began practising scales on
the bar of her pram. Then, looking at me with a half-smile on her lips,
she said: "That's what they teach me."

After a little further conversation she told me she was from London,
and was down with her people for their holiday.

I said it seemed strange to me she should be having a holiday so late
in the season. "Look," I said, "at that cold grey sea and the great
stretch of sand with only one group of two or three children left on it
with their little buckets and spades."

"Yes," she said, in a meditative way; "it is very late." Then, after a
pause, she turned towards me with