"I see them so," she said, pointing with a grass stem, "white, green,
yellow, red, purple, and when people are angry or bad, black across the
red--as you were just now."
"Who told you anything about it--in the beginning?" I demanded.
"About the colours? No one. I used to ask what colours were when I was
little--in table-covers and curtains and carpets, you see--because some
colours hurt me and some made me happy. People told me; and when I got
older that was how I saw people." Again she traced the outline of the Egg
which it is given to very few of us to see.
"All by yourself?" I repeated.
"All by myself. There wasn't anyone else. I only found out afterwards that
other people did not see the Colours."
She leaned against the tree-hole plaiting and unplaiting chance-plucked
grass stems. The children in the wood had drawn nearer. I could see them
with the tail of my eye frolicking like squirrels.
"Now I am sure you will never laugh at me," she went on after a long
silence. "Nor at _them_."
"Goodness! No!" I cried, jolted out of my train of thought. "A man who
laughs at a child--unless the child is laughing too--is a heathen!"
"I didn't mean that of course. You'd never laugh _at_ children, but I
thought--I used to think--that perhaps you might laugh about _them_. So
now I beg your pardon.... What are you going to laugh at?"
I had made no sound, but she knew.
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