All she knew was that she was out of breath for no apparent reason, and on the verge of tears at seeing no one there to meet her.

Once before, on her sixth birth day, the same call had been sent to her when she was playing alone with her dolls in the semitropical garden of a hired house in Florida, and she had started up and toddled round to the front and found a large-eyed little girl peering through the gate.

It was the beginning of a close and blessed friendship.
This time, it seemed, the call had been meant for some other lonely soul, and so she stood and looked with blurred eyes over the wide valley that lay unrolled at her feet and, asked herself what she had ever done to deserve to be left out of all the joy of life.

From somewhere near by the baying of hounds came, and from a farm to her left the crowing of a cock; and then a twig snapped behind her, and she turned eagerly.
"Oh, hello," said the boy.
"Oh, hello," she said.
He was not the hero of her dreams, by a long way.

His hair didn't curl; his nose was not particularly straight; nor were his eyes large and magnetic.