THE GOLDEN AGE
hundred and fifty! Let's play at something, at once!'
'Rounders is a good game,' I suggested. 'Girls can play at rounders. And we could serve up to the sun-dial here. But you want a bat and a ball, and some more people.'
She struck her hands together tragically.
'I haven't a bat,' she cried, 'or a ball, or more people, or anything sensible whatever. Never mind; let's play at hide-and-seek in the kitchen-garden. And we'll race there, up to that walnut-tree; I haven't run for a century!'
She was so easy a victor, nevertheless, that I began to doubt, as I panted behind, whether she had not exaggerated her age by a year or two. She flung herself into hide-and-seek with all the gusto and abandonment of the true artist; and as she flitted away and reappeared, flushed and laughing divinely, the pale witch-maiden seemed to fall away from her, and she moved rather as that other girl I had read about, snatched from fields of daffodil to reign in shadow below, yet permitted now and again
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