. The one I knew the best of all : a memory of the mind of a child . face with the StrangeThing, but she felt an indescribable awed dreari-ness. She also wondered why she did not beginto cry. She had imagined that at the sight ofthe Strange Thing one would inevitably begin tocry. She wondered if it was because she had noheart that she did not. Ought one really to sobbitterly at the sight of a little boy one had notknown at all well, and of whom one chiefly re-membered that he had heart disease and bluelips ? He is an Angel, she kept insisting, mentally. He has gone to Heaven. The girl who had
. The one I knew the best of all : a memory of the mind of a child . face with the StrangeThing, but she felt an indescribable awed dreari-ness. She also wondered why she did not beginto cry. She had imagined that at the sight ofthe Strange Thing one would inevitably begin tocry. She wondered if it was because she had noheart that she did not. Ought one really to sobbitterly at the sight of a little boy one had notknown at all well, and of whom one chiefly re-membered that he had heart disease and bluelips ? He is an Angel, she kept insisting, mentally. He has gone to Heaven. The girl who had taken her to the house whis-pered to her, telling her to touch him. She hadtouched him herself, and so had the others. Thisappeared to be part of a ceremony. The SmallPerson shrank very much. She felt that it would The Strange Thing 167 be an awful thing to do. And yet she had heardso much about a certain strange coldness—colderthan anything else—not the same thing as anyother coldness—as cold as Death. There wasa fearsome longing to know what it was like. S. And if one touched what the Strange Thing hadleft, one did not dream about it. One could notbear the thought of dreaming of the small room,the horsehair sofa, and the poor little unlovelyobject with the frilled muslin cap and eyelids notquite closed. 168 The One I Knew tlie Best of All She put out her hand and touched the unsmil-ing cheek. As cold as Death ! It was not as cold asshe had imagined it would be. Not as cold as iceor as cold as snow—and yet—and yet—it was un-like anything else—a soft chillness which some-how seemed to hold no possibility of its everbeing warmed. What she carried away from thedreary little room when she left it was the mem-ory of that soft chillness and a sort of wonder atherself because she had really seen the StrangeThing. Poor little Alfie, the executive child said. Im very sorry for him, but hes better general opinion expressed was that every-body was sorry for him. It
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