"Where did you find her?" I asked the girl, beginning to fear that I
had been the indirect cause of the poor child's misfortunes.
"Down by the river looking for little Niebla. I knew she would be there
when I missed her this morning."
"How did you know that?" I asked. "You did not hear the story I told
her."
"I made her repeat it all to me last night," said Monica.
After that little Anita was scolded, shaken, washed and dried, then
fed, and finally lifted on to the back of her pony and sent to take
care of the sheep. While undergoing this treatment she maintained a
profound silence, her little face puckered up into an expression that
boded tears. They were not for the public, however, and only after she
was on the pony, with the reins in her little mites of hands and her
back towards us, did she give way to her grief and disappointment at
having failed to find the beautiful child of the mist.
I was astonished to find that she had taken the fantastic little tale
invented to amuse her as truth; but the poor babe had never read books
or heard stories, and the fairy tale had been too much for her starved
little imagination. I remember that once on another occasion I told
a pathetic story of a little child, lost in a great wilderness, to a
girl about Anita's age, and just as unaccustomed to this kind of mental
fare. Next morning her mother informed me that my little listener had
spent half the night sobbing and begging to be allowed to go and look
for that lost child I had told her about.
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