A short time ago I had occasion to invite to Sunday dinner a little boy
friend of mine who is nine years old. Lest he _might_ feel his youth in
a household which no longer contains any nine-year-olds, I invited to
"meet him" two other boys, playmates of his, of about the same age.
There chanced also to be present a friend, a professor in a woman's
college, into whose daily life very seldom strays a boy, especially one
nine years old.

"What interesting things have you been doing lately?" she observed to
the boy beside her in the pause which followed our settling of ourselves
at the table.

"I have been seeing 'The Blue Bird,'" he at once answered. "Have _you_
seen it?" he next asked.

No sooner had she replied than he turned to me. "I suppose, of course,
_you've_ seen it," he said.

"Not yet," I told him; "but I have read it--"

"Oh, so have I!" exclaimed one of the other boys; "and I've seen it,
too. There is one act in the play that isn't in the book--'The Land of
Happiness' it is. My mother says she doesn't think Mr. Maeterlinck could
have written it; it is so different from the rest of the play."

Those present, old and young, who had seen "The Blue Bird" debated this
possibility at some length.

Then the boy who had introduced it said to me: "I wonder, when you see
it, whether _you'll_ think Mr. Maeterlinck wrote 'The Land of Happiness'