11.  Margery heard her mother calling her, and she trudged home across the shells and pebbles with a pleasant smile dimpling her cheeks; for she felt very much at home in this large, wonderful world, and was happy to be alive, although she neither could have told, nor cared to know, the reason why.  But when her mother unpinned the little girl’s Highland shawl, and took off her hood, she said, “O mother, do let me live on the doorstep!  I don’t like houses to stay in.  What makes everything so pretty and so glad?  Don’t you like to wonder?”

12.  Margery’s mother was a good woman.  But then there was all the housework to do, and, if she had thoughts, she did not often let them wander outside of the kitchen door.  And just now she was baking some gingerbread, which was in danger of getting burned in the oven.  So she pinned the shawl around the child’s neck again, and left her on the doorstep, saying to herself, as she returned to her work, “Queer child!  I wonder what kind of a woman she will be!”

13.  But Margery sat on the doorstep, and wondered, as the sea sounded louder, and the sunshine grew warmer around her.  It was all so strange, and grand, and beautiful!  Her heart danced with joy to the music that went echoing through the wide world from the roots of the sprouting grass to the great golden blossom of the sun.

14.  And when the round, gray eyes closed that night, at the first peep of the stars, the angels looked down and wondered over Margery.  For the wisdom of the wisest being God has made, ends in wonder; and there is nothing on earth so wonderful as the budding soul of a little child.

Definitions.-l.  Trudg’ing, walking sturdily. 2.  Hues, colors.  Ca’lyx, the outer covering of a flower. 4.  Ho-ri’zon, the line where the sky and earth seem to meet. 5.  War’ble, a trill of the voice.  Spears, shoots of grass.  Sheaths, coverings.

Exercises.—­Name the things about which Margery wondered.  What did she wonder about each?  What is still more wonderful than all that at which Margery wondered?

XXXVI.  THE CHILD’S WORLD. (103)

1.  “Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world,
   With the wonderful water round you curled,
   And the wonderful grass upon your breast,—­
   World, you are beautifully drest.”

2.  “The wonderful air is over me,
   And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree;
   It walks on the water, and whirls the mills,
   And talks to itself on the tops of the hills.”

3.  “You friendly Earth! how far do you go
   With the wheat fields that nod, and the rivers that flow;
   With cities and gardens, and cliffs and isles,
   And people upon you for thousands of miles?”

4.  “Ah, you are so great, and I am so small,
   I tremble to think of you, World, at all: 
   And yet, when I said my prayers, to-day,
   A whisper inside me seemed to say,
   You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot: 
   You can love and think, and the Earth can not!’”