ment to another the invisible child to whom he is talking will step out from the shadows and be there in the room with you.
Alice could never quite believe in the unreality of the two voices. It seemed to her that the child with whom Robert played had always whisked himself out of the room just in time to prevent her seeing him. It was as though you could feel his presence; as though, like the children in story books, he had an invisible cap to pop on his head the moment Alice came in, and she could almost hear him snicker at the joke he was playing on her.
Now in this world it is never wise to meddle with such things. It's better to leave them as they are. No one ever had any good come to him from fraternizing with too great familiarity with the unknown; and it's a very good thing that the children from The Other Side are as shy as they are, as Alice found out through Evelyn Dearie.
She learned through Sara's songs that Evelyn Dearie was Sara's Other Side friend. By keeping quiet Alice was rewarded by hearing Sara cautiously calling:
"Evelyn, Evelyn Dearie!"
Sometimes, children's most delightful fancies have their roots in black dirt. It was through Laurie that Alice identified the fairy child of make-believe with the Evelyn Dearie in real life.
One would like to be poetical in talking about these make-believe children, but the truth was that the real Evelyn Dearie lived down the street and was a fat, unlovely girl who was swung perpetually in a hammock. Laurie spoke thus of her:
"It's broke is my heart with 'Evelyn Dearie this' and 'Evelyn Dearie that,' an' how came 'Evelyn Dearie' to stick in Sara's head I can't tell you, Mis' Marcey. I
