, and upon this jewel
the sun danced splendidly. Mary Makebelieve wished she had a slender
red coral wristlet; it also would have hung down to her palm and been
lovely in the sunlight, and it would, she thought, have been far nicer
than the bangle.

IX

She walked along for some time in the Park. Through the railings
flanking the great road many beds of flowers could be seen. These were
laid out in a great variety of forms--of stars and squares and crosses
and circles, and the flowers were arranged in exquisite patterns.
There was a great star which flamed with red flowers at the deep
points, and in its heart a heavier mass of yellow blossom glared
suddenly. There were circles wherein each ring was a differently
colored flower, and others where three rings alternated--three rings
white, three purple, and three orange, and so on in slenderer circles
to the tiniest diminishing. Mary Makebelieve wished she knew the names
of all the flowers, but the only ones she recognized by sight were the
geraniums, some species of roses, violets, and forget-me-nots and
pansies. The more exotic sorts she did not know, and, while she
admired them greatly, she had not the same degree of affection for
them as for the commoner, friendly varieties.

Leaving the big road she wandered into wider fields. In a few moments
the path was hidden, the outside cars, motor cars and bicycles had
vanished as completely as though there were no such things in the
world. Great numbers of children were playing about in distinct bands;
each troop was accompanied by one and sometimes two older people,
girls or women who lay stretched out on the warm grass or leaned
against the tree-trunks reading novelettes, and around them the
children whirled and screamed and laughed. It was a world of waving
pinafores and thin black-stockinged legs and shrill, sweet voices. In
the great spaces the children's voices had a strangely remote quality;
the sweet, high tones were not such as one heard in the streets or in
houses. In a house or a street these voices thudded upon the air and
beat sonorously back again from the walls, the houses, or the
pavements; but out here the slender sounds sang to a higher tenuity
and disappeared out and up and away into the tree-tops and the clouds
and the wide, windy reaches. The little figures partook also of this
diminuendo effect; against the great grassy curves they seemed smaller
than they really were; the trees stirred hugely