seemed to cradle the wailings of an invisible infant as it went mounting
aloft, spreading its thin apron to the wind.

"Wahoo! wahoo!" sang Katipah's blue-and-green kite, "shall I ever be loved by
anybody?" And Katipah, keeping fast hold of the string, would watch where it
mounted and looked so small, and think that surely some day her kite would
bring her the only thing she much cared about.

Katipah's next-door neighbour had everything that her own lonely heart most
wished for: not only had she a husband, but a fine baby as well. Yet she was
such a jealous, cross-grained body that she seemed to get no happiness out of
the fortune Heaven had sent her. Husband and child seemed both to have caught
the infection of her bitter temper: all day and night beating and brawling
went on; there seemed no peace in that house.

But for all that the woman, whose name was Bimsha, was quite proud of being a
wife and a mother: and in the daytime, when her man was away, she would look
over the fence and laugh at Katipah, crying boastfully, "Don't think you will
ever have a husband, Katipah: you are too poor and unprofitable! Look at me,
and be envious!"

Then Katipah would go softly away, and send up her kite by the seashore till
she heard a far-off, sweet, babe-like cry as the wind blew through the strings
high in air.

"Shall I ever be loved by anybody?" thought she, as she jerked at the cord;
and away the kite flew higher than ever, and the sound of its call grew
fainter.

One morning, in the beginning of the year, Katipah went up on to the hill