When I Was a Little Girl

by Zona Gale

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL

 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

 

SOMEWHERE BEYOND SEALED DOORS

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE
GIRL

BY

ZONA GALE

AUTHOR OF “THE LOVES OF PELLEAS AND ETARRE,”
“FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE,” ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

AGNES PELTON

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1913

Copyright, 1911, by The Curtis Publishing Company.

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Copyright, 1913,

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

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Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1913.

 

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

To

THE LITTLE GIRL ON CONANT STREET

AND TO THE

MEMORY OF HER GRANDMOTHER

HARRIET BEERS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER		PAGE
I.	In Those Days	1
II.	In No Time	16
III.	One for the Money	35
IV.	The Picnic	53
V.	The King’s Trumpeter	77
VI.	My Lady of the Apple Tree	103
VII.	The Princess Romancia	118
VIII.	Two for the Show	147
IX.	Next Door	159
X.	What’s Proper	173
XI.	Dolls	192
XII.	Bit-Bit	211
XIII.	Why	228
XIV.	King	247
XV.	King (continued)	281
XVI.	The Walk	307
XVII.	The Great Black Hush	315
XVIII.	The Decoration of Independence	329
XIX.	Earth-Mother	354
XX.	Three to Make Ready	375

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Somewhere beyond sealed doors	Frontispiece
	FACING PAGE
Sat on a rock in the landscape and practised	32
Little by little she grew silent and refused to join in the games	128
But the minute folk left the room—ah, then!	168
She settled everything in that way; she counted the petals of fennel daisies and blew thistle from dandelions	196
Then out of the valley a great deev arose	216
To see what running away is really like	316

There used to be a little girl who does not come here any more. She is not dead, for when certain things happen, she stirs slightly where she is, perhaps deep within the air. When the sun falls in a particular way, when graham griddle cakes are baking, when the sky laughs sudden blue after a storm, or the town clock points in its clearest you-will-be-late way at nine in the morning, when the moonlight is on the midnight and nothing moves—then, somewhere beyond sealed doors, the little girl says something, and it is plain that she is here all the time.

You little child who never have died, in these stories I am trying to tell you that now I come near to understanding you. I see you still, with your over-long hair and your over-much chattering, your naughtiness and your dreams. I know the qualities that made you disagreeable and those that made you dear, and I look on you somewhat as spirit looks on spirit, understanding from within. I wish that we could live it again, you and I—not all of it, by any means, and not for a serious business; but now and then, for a joy and for an idleness. And this book is a way of trying to do it over again, together.

Will you care to come from the quiet where you are, near to me and yet remote? I think that you will come, for you were wont untiringly to wonder about me. And now here I am, come true, so faintly like her whom you dreamed, yet so like you yourself, your child, fruit of your spirit, you little shadowy mother. . . .

If only words were moments
And I knew where they fly,
I’d make a tale of time itself
To tell you by and bye.

If only words were fathoms
That let us by for pearls,
I’d make a story ocean-strange
For little boys and girls.

But words are only shadow things.
I summon all I may.
Oh, see—they try to spell out Life!
Let’s act it, like a play.