Sometimes
it quivered over Mistress Mary's head, and fired every delicate point
of her steel tiara with such splendour that the Irish babies almost
felt like crossing themselves. At such times, those deux petits
coeurs secs, Atlantic and Pacific, and all the other full-fledged and
half-fledged scape-graces, forgot to be naughty, and the millennium
was foreshadowed. The neophytes declared Mistress Mary a bit of a
magician. Somehow or other, the evil imps in the children shrank
away, abashed by the soft surprise of a glance that seemed to hope
something better, and the good angels came out of their banishment,
unfolded their wings, and sunned themselves in the warmth of her
approving smile. Her spiritual antennae were so fine, so fine, that
they discerned the good in everything; they were feeling now after
the soft spot in the rocky heart of Atlantic Simonson; they had not
found it yet, but they would--oh, they would in time; for if hope is
the lover's staff, it is no less that of the idealist.
Marm Lisa looked upon the miracles that happened under Mistress
Mary's roof with a sort of dazed wonder, but her intelligence grew a
little day by day; and though she sadly taxed everybody's patience,
she infused a new spirit into all the neophytes.
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