“Who is this?” Silky asks.

     It was Silky’s turn to choose a bedtime story.

    On the cover of the book Silky found stands a befreckled girl, hands poised defiantly on her hips and orange-red braids sticking nearly straight out from either side of her head. She wears a broad, mischievous grin, a monkey on her shoulder, and enormous black and dilapidated shoes on her feet, that may or may not have once belonged to a Pirate.

     “This,” I tell Silky, “is a most adventuresome girl, to whom the rules of man have never managed to apply themselves.” 

     “What does that mean?” Silky asks.

    “It means, little angel, that she is a great deal like you."

      Silky's eyes widen. She's terribly fond of herself and anything like her. 

     "This one then," Silky says of the book, and off we go to bed. 

     I suspect we'll be adding Longstockings to someone's name soon.