Margery | Page 7

inward voice told me that a thousand kisses
from Cousin Maud would never be worth one single kiss from that
lovely young mother, and that I had indeed lost almost as much as my
pitying friends had said. And I could not help sorrowing, weeping for a
long time; I felt as though I had lost just what was best and dearest, and
for the first time I saw that my good cousin was right ugly as other
folks said, and my silly little head conceived that a real mother must be
fair to look upon, and that however kind any one else might be she
could never be so gracious and lovable.
And so I fell asleep; and in my dreams the picture came towards me out
of the frame and took me in her arms as Madonna takes her Holy Child,
and looked at me with a gaze as if all the love on earth had met in those
eyes. I threw my arms round her neck and waited for her to fondle and
play with me like Mistress Stromer with her little Clare; but she gently

and sadly shook her head with the golden crownlet, and went up to
Cousin Maud and set me in her lap.
"I have never forgot that dream, and often in my prayers have I lifted
up my heart to my sainted mother, and cried to her as to the blessed
Virgin and Saint Margaret, my name-saint; and how often she has
heard me and rescued me in need and jeopardy! As to my cousin, she
was ever dearer to me from that night; for had not my own mother
given me to her, and when folks looked at me pitifully and bewailed
my lot, I could laugh in my heart and think: 'If only you knew! Your
children have only one mother, but we have two; and our own real
mother is prettier than any one's, while the other, for all that she is so
ugly, is the best.'"
It was the compassion of folks that first led me to such thoughts, and as
I grew older I began to deem that their pity had done little good to my
young soul. Friends are ever at hand to comfort every job; but few are
they who come to share his heaviness, all the more so because all men
take pleasure in comparing their own fair lot with the evil lot of others.
Compassion--and I am the last to deny it--is a noble and right healing
grace; but those who are so ready to extend it should be cautious how
they do so, especially in the case of a child, for a child is like a sapling
which needs light, and those who darken the sun that shines on it sin
against it, and hinder its growth. Instead of bewailing it, make it glad;
that is the comfort that befits it.
I felt I had discovered a great and important secret and I was eager to
make our sainted mother known to my brothers; but they had found her
already without any aid from their little sister. I told first one and then
the other all that stirred within me, and when I spoke to Herdegen, the
elder, I saw at once that it was nothing new to him. Kunz, the younger,
I found in the swing; he flew so high that I thought he would fling
himself out, and I cried to him to stop a minute; but, as he clutched the
rope tighter and pulled himself together to stand firm on the board, he
cried: "Leave me now, Margery; I want to go up, up; up to Heaven--up
to where mother is!"
That was enough for me; and from that hour we often spoke together of

our sainted mother, and Cousin Maud took care that we should likewise
keep our father in mind. She had his portrait--as she had had my
mother's--brought from the great dining-room, where it had hung, into
the large children's room where she slept with me. And this picture, too,
left its mark on my after-life; for when I had the measles, and Master
Paul Rieter, the town physician and our doctor, came to see me, he
stayed a long time, as though he could not bear to depart, standing in
front of the portrait; and when he turned to me again, his face was quite
red with sorrowful feeling--for he had been a favorite friend of my
father, at Padua--and he exclaimed: "What a fortunate child art thou,
little Margery!"
I must have looked at him puzzled enough, for no one had ever
esteemed me fortunate, unless it were Cousin Maud or the
Waldstromers in the forest; and Master Paul must have observed my
amazement, for he