naughty ve'y bad."

But the reproof was as meaningless as the babbling of a baby. Neither
disapproval nor black looks availed; unchecked the merriment went on
until exhausted by its own violence. I knew she was laughing at me, but
what mattered? To her I was a comical old figure in a strange museum. To
me she stood for all I had lost of girlhood rights and I wanted her for
my friend. Her laughter went through me like a draft of wine. The echo
swept a long silent chord, and the tune it played was the jig-time of
youth.

When Zura caught her breath and explained the meaning of her words, it
disclosed to me a phase of life of which I had never dreamed. Pictures
that moved and talked while you looked, public halls for dancing, and
boys meeting young girls alone after dark to "treat" them! The child
spoke of it all easily and as a matter of course. I knew more than I
wanted of the dark side of Oriental life, but I had been so long
accustomed to idealizing my own country and all its ways that her talk
was to me like an unkind story about a dear friend.

But happy to find a listener who was interested in things familiar to
her--Zura chattered away, of her friends and her pleasures, and though
many of her words were in an unknown tongue, the picture she
unconsciously drew of herself was as clear as transparency. It was an
unguided, undisciplined life, big with possibilities for love or hate
that even now was wavering in the balance for good or bad.

Once again the afternoon sun fell upon the girl. It touched her face,
tender of contour and coloring. It found her hair and made of it a crown
of bronze and gold. For a moment it lingered, then climbing, lighted up