came:

"I was--trying to make it come true, Auntie Dorrie," this with a
suspicious break in the voice.

"What, darling?" Doris came down and took the child in her arms.

"Mary says if you believe anything hard enough you can make it come
true. _She_ always can! I wanted to play with the fountain girls--I know
it would be beautiful--but you have to be _like them_. You have to shut
the whole world out--and then you know what they know."

"Why, little girl, do you think the fountain children are happier than
you and Nancy?"

With that groping that all mothers feel when they first confront the
_individual_ in the child they believed they knew Doris asked her
question.

"I've used Nancy and me all up!" was Joan's astonishing reply.

"All up?" the two meaningless words were the most that Doris could
grasp.

"Yes, Aunt Dorrie. Dolls and Mary's silly stories and Nancy's funny
games all over and over and over until they make me--sick!"

Joan actually looked sick, so intense was she.

"Nan is happy always, Aunt Dorrie--she's made like that--but I use
things up and then I want something else. Mary said that, honest true,
things would come if you believed hard enough. Maybe I cannot believe
hard enough--or maybe Mary didn't speak truth. She doesn't always, Aunt
Dorrie."

Doris gasped and drew the child closer. It was like being dragged, by
the little hand, to an unsuspected danger that she, not the child,
understood.

Gradually the inner side of the years was turned out by Doris's careful
questions and Joan's quiet simplicity. She revealed so much now that
she found that her view of life had a dramatic interest. It appeared,
quite innocently, that Nancy could assume any position in order to win
her way.

"She always speaks truth, Auntie Dorrie," Joan loyally defended, "but
she can make truth out of such queer things; it just _is_ truth to
Nancy, for she doesn't want to hurt people's feelings. Mary likes Nancy
best, for I cannot make truth when I want to. Aunt Dorrie--truth
is--a--_a thing_, isn't it?"

"Yes, darling. But we--we see it differently, that is all."

This was comforting to Joan, and she smiled. Then Mary again took the
centre of the stage--Mary's interpretations, all coloured with the
mystery of her desolate childhood; her old superstitions and power to
control by the magic of her imagination. There were certain tales, it
seemed, that were held as bribes. Nancy would always succumb to the
lures; Jo