Talk of the Heart: A Childhood Plaything

The path knew her—knew her by her light, unhurried walk... and never did the path know, before or since, the like of that rhythmic walk, accompanied by the dance of blond locks on the broad forehead!

Our little one was not alone, that summer; she had a companion a finger's breadth taller. Together the two would go down to the valley, ahead of the dawn—she to line her eyes with its first rays, and he to pluck from its violet threads a ribbon to adorn her lovely head!

And the path would bring her at last to an aged fig tree; the two would plunge in among its interlacing boughs, and nothing could get them out but the shrieking and protest of the sparrows, and the voice of the watchman crashing down on them from on high, from his lookout on the knoll...

And her favorite pastime was to shout their throats hoarse in the heart of that valley, then to listen as the waves of echo followed one another, answering, limpid, until they thinned away... and died.

...How the echo wearied of that monotonous game! But the two little ones never wearied: a shout, then a hush, ....... then laughter—and what laughter!!!!

*

And today the little girl of that far-off yesterday returns, wrapped in a sash of care. The path knows the fall of her unhurried steps, and the grains of dust stir to welcome her.... The valley is on the point of asking her about the companion who stood a finger taller... and the echo holds back, remembering the ring of that double laughter which used to tickle the valley at every dawn...

Is it true that it has gone with the wind?!