As a last
resort she bought brown shoes and brown laces.
'If these do not succeed,' she said, 'I will have red ones made,
paint the tips blue, and give her yellow laces; but I will fix her
mind on her feet and arouse her pride in them, or die in the
attempt.'
This extreme, fortunately, proved unnecessary, since for some unknown
reason the brown foot-gear appealed to Marm Lisa, and she kept the
laces tied. The salient peculiarity and encouraging feature of the
child's development was that, save in rare cases, she did not slip
back into her old habits when the novelty of the remedy wore off;
with her, almost every point gained was a point kept. It was indeed
a high Hill Difficulty that she was climbing--so high that had she
realised it she would never have taken the first step of her own
unaided will; but now this impelling force behind her was so great,
and the visions for ever leading her on were so beautiful, that she
ran nor grew weary, she walked yet did not faint.
The other children, even the youngest of them, were more or less
interested in the novel enterprise, too, though they scarcely knew
the nature of it or how much was at stake. That a human mind was
tottering to its fall, and that Mistress Mary was engaged in
preventing it, was beyond their ken.
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