Two only are left now--the queer father and the eldest of the four
children, the reddish-eyed girl with the small hands, the girl who
"never talked hopefully." Fame has come to her and to her dead
sisters. For looking from childhood into this livid glass that
reflected their world, they have peopled it with strange spirits.
Men and women in the real world recognise the awful power of these
spirits, without understanding them, not having been brought up
themselves in front of this mirror. But the survivor knows the
mirror too well.
"_Mademoiselle, vous etes triste_."
"_Monsieur, j'en ai bien le droit_."
With a last look I see into the small, commonplace church that lies
just below the parsonage: and on a tablet by the altar I read a list
of many names. . .
And the last is that of Charlotte Bronte.
THE SMALL PEOPLE.
_To a Lady who had asked for a Fairy Tale_.
You thought it natural, my dear lady, to lay this command on me at
the dance last night. We had parted, two months ago, in London, and
we met, unexpectedly and to music, in this corner of the land where
(they say) the piskies still keep. And certainly, when I led you out
upon the balcony (that you might not see the new moon through glass
and lose a lucky month), it was not hard to picture the Small People
at their play on the turf and among the dim flower-beds below us.
But, as a matter of fact, they are dead, these Small People.
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