The Project Gutenberg EBook of Somebody's Little Girl, by Martha Young

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Title: Somebody's Little Girl

Author: Martha Young

Release Date: January 22, 2008 [EBook #702]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOMEBODY'S LITTLE GIRL ***

SOMEBODY'S LITTLE GIRL

by Martha Young

Dedication

To
Two Little Elizabeths:
Elizabeth Young
and
Elizabeth Magruder

SOMEBODY'S LITTLE GIRL

If I were just to tell the things that Bessie Bell remembered I should
tell you some very strange things. Bessie Bell did not know whether
she remembered them, or just knew them, or whether they just grew,
those strange things in some strange country that never was anywhere in
the world; for when Bessie Bell tried to tell about those strange
things great grown wise people said: "No, no, Bessie Bell, there is
nothing in the world like that."

So Bessie Bell just remembered and wondered.

She remembered how somewhere, sometime, there was a window where you
could look out and see everything green, little and green, and always
changing and moving, away, away--beyond everything little, and green,
and moving all the time. But great grown wise folks said: "No, there
is no window in all the world like that."

And once when some one gave Bessie Bell a little round red apple she
caught her breath very quickly and her little heart jumped and then
thumped very loudly (that is the way it seemed to her) and she
remembered: Little apple trees all just alike, and little apple trees
in rows all just alike on top of those and again on top of those until
they came to a great row of big round red apples on top of all.

Rut great grown people said: "No, no, Bessie Bell, there are no apple
trees in all the world like that."

And one time Bessie Bell was at a pretty house and somebody sat her on
a little low chair and said: "Keep still, Bessie Bell."

She kept still so long that at last she began to be afraid to move at
all, and she got afraid even to crook up her little finger for fear it
would pop off loud,--she had kept still so long that all her round
little fingers and her round little legs felt so