There were children, and children in all the summer cabins on that
high mountain.

And those children did not walk in rows.

And those children did not do things by one hours.

And those children did not wash their hands in little white basins
sitting in rows on long back gallery benches.

It was strange to Bessie Bell that those children did not sit in
rows to eat tiny cakes with caraway seeds in them while Sister
Angela sat on the bench under the great magnolia-tree and looked at
the row of little girls.

It was so very strange to Bessie Bell that these children wore all
sorts of clothes--all sorts! Not just blue dresses, and blue checked
aprons.

And Bessie Bell knew, too, that those little girls in all sorts of
clothes could not float away into that strange country of No-where
and Never-was, where, too, the things that she remembered seemed to
drift away--and to so nearly get lost, living only in dimming
memory.

These little girls in all sorts of clothes were real, and sure-
enough, and nobody could ever say of them, ``There are no such
little girls in the world,'' because sometimes when Bessie Bell would
get to thinking, and thinking about the strangeness of them, she
would almost wonder if she did not just remember them. When she