"The only thing I am keen about is to be allowed to wear colors that I like. I love gay colors--red one day, yellow the next, the brightest blue the next I hate art shades. I am not a bit æsthetic. Once they took me to London, but I ran away home. Oh, what a time I had! I am a wild sort of thing. Now, do you suppose that any mother, of her own free-will, would have a daughter like me? Of course I am a changeling. I suppose I belong to the fairies, and my greatest wish on earth is to see them some day. Sometimes I think they will meet me in the meadows or in the forest, which is two miles away, or even in the lake, for I suppose fairies can swim. But they have never come yet. If they came I'd ask them to let me go back to them, for I do so hate indoor life and civilization and refinement. And now you see the sort I am, and if you are the sort I somehow think you are, why shouldn't we be friends? Perhaps you are a changeling, too. You know that dress doesn't suit you one bit; it is too grand and fine-ladyish; and you ought to let your hair stream down your back instead of having it tied behind with that ribbon. And you ought to have a hole in your hat instead of that grand black feather. And--oh, good gracious!--what funny boots! I never saw anything like them--all shiny, and with such pointed toes. How can you walk in them? I as often as not go barefoot all day long; but then I am a wild thing, a changeling, and I suppose, after all, you are not."