Once a month she would go and stand at the shrine gate, and say to the people
as they went in to pray, "Will nobody love me?" And the people would turn
their heads away quickly and make haste to get past, and in their hearts would
wonder to themselves: "Foolish little Katipah! Does she think that we can
spare time to love any one so poor and unprofitable as she?"

On the other days Katipah would go down to the beach, where everybody went who
had a kite to fly--for all the men in that country flew kites, and all the
children,--and there she would fly a kite of her own up into the blue air; and
watching the wind carrying it farther and farther away, would grow quite happy
thinking how a day might come at last when she would really be loved, though
her queer little outside made her seem so poor and unprofitable.

Katipah's kite was green, with blue eyes in its square face; and in one corner
it had a very small pursed-up red mouth holding a spray of peach-blossom. She
had made it herself; and to her it meant the green world, with the blue sky
over it when the spring begins to be sweet, and there, tucked away in one
corner of it, her own little warm mouth waiting and wishing to be kissed: and
out of all that wishing and waiting the blossom of hope was springing, never
to be let go.

All round her were hundreds of others flying their kites, and all had some
wish or prayer to Fortune. But Katipah's wish and prayer were only that she
might be loved.

The silver sandhills lay in loops and chains round the curve of the blue bay,
and all along them flocks of gaily coloured kites hovered and fluttered and
sprang. And, as they went up into the clear air, the wind sighing in the
strings was like the crying of a young child. "Wahoo! wahoo!" every kite