Marm Lisa. Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith

things hanging on the walls; a soft gingham apron that her clumsy fingers loved to touch; brilliant bits of colour and entrancing waves of sound that roused her sleeping senses to something like pleasure; a smile meeting her eyes when she looked up—oh! she knew a smile—God lets love dwell in these imprisoned spirits!  By-and-by all these new sensations were followed by thoughts, or something akin to them.  Her face wore a brooding, puzzled look, ‘Poor little soul, she is feeling her growing-pains!’ said Mistress Mary.  It was a mind sitting in a dim twilight where everything seems confused.  The physical eye appears to see, but the light never quite pierces the dimness nor reflects its beauty there.  If the ears hear the song of birds, the cooing of babes, the heart-beat in the organ tone, then the swift little messengers that fly hither and thither in my mind and yours, carrying echoes of sweetness unspeakable, tread more slowly here, and never quite reach the spirit in prison.  A spirit in prison, indeed, but with one ray of sunlight shining through the bars,—a vision of duty.  Lisa’s weak memory had lost almost all trace of Mr. Grubb as a person but the old instinct of fidelity was still there in solution, and unconsciously influenced her actions.  The devotion that first possessed her when she beheld the twins as babies in the perambulator still held sway against all their evil actions.  If they plunged into danger she plunged after them without a thought of consequences.  There was, perhaps, no real heroism in this, for she saw no risks and counted no cost: this is what other people said, but Mistress Mary always thought Marm Lisa had in her the stuff out of which heroes and martyrs are made.  She had never walked in life’s sunny places; it had always been the valley of the shadow for her.  She was surrounded by puzzles with never any answer to one of them, but if only she had comprehended the truth, it was these very puzzles that were her salvation.  While her feeble mind stirred, while it wondered, brooded, suffered,—enough it did all these too seldom,—it kept itself alive, even if the life were only like the flickering of a candle.  And now the candle might flicker, but it should never go out altogether, if half a dozen pairs of women’s hands could keep it from extinction; and how patiently they were outstretched to shield the poor apology for a flame, and coax it into burning more brightly!

      ‘Let the child choose her own special teacher,’ said Mistress Mary; ‘she is sure to have a strong preference.’

      ‘Then it will be you,’ laughed Helen.

      ‘Don’t be foolish; it may be any one of us and it will prove nothing in any case, save a fancy that we can direct to good use.  She seldom looks at anybody but you,’ said Edith.

      ‘That is true,’ replied Mary thoughtfully.  ‘I think she is attracted by this glittering steel thing in my hair.  I am going to weave it into Helen’s curly crop some day, and see whether she misses it or transfers her affection.  I have made up my mind who is the best teacher for her, and whom she will chose.’

      Rhoda gave a comical groan.  ‘Don’t say it’s I,’ she pleaded.  ‘I dread it.  Please I am not good enough, I don’t know how; and besides, she gives me the creeps!’

      Mistress Mary turned on Rhoda with a reproachful smile, saying, ‘You naughty Rhoda, with the brightest eyes, the swiftest feet, the nimblest fingers, the lightest heart among us all, why do you want to shirk?’

      Mistress Mary had noted the fact that Lisa had refused to sit in an unpainted chair, but had dragged a red one from another room and ensconced herself in it, though it was uncomfortably small.

      Now Rhoda was well named, for she was a rose of a girl, with damask cheeks that glowed like two Jacqueminot beauties.  She was much given to aprons of scarlet linen, to collars and belts of red velvet, and she had a general air of being fresh, thoroughly alive, and in a state of dewy and perennial bloom.  Mary was right in her surmise, and whenever she herself was out of Lisa’s sight or reach the child turned to Rhoda instinctively and obeyed her implicitly.

      V

      HOW THE NEW PLANT GREW

      ‘Now, Rhoda dear,’ said Mistress Mary one day, when Lisa had become somewhat wonted to her new surroundings, ‘you are to fold your hands respectfully in your lap and I will teach you things,—things which you in your youth and inexperience have not thought about as yet.  The other girls may listen, too, and catch the drippings of my wisdom.  I really know little about the education of defective children, but, thank heaven, I can put two and two together, as Susan Nipper said.  The general plan will be to train Lisa’s hands and speak to her senses in every possible way, since her organs of sense are within your reach, and those of thought are out of it.  The hardest lesson for such a child to learn is the subordination of its erratic will to our normal ones.  Lisa’s attention is the most hopeful thing about her and encourages me more than anything else.  It is not as if there were no mental processes existing; they are there, but in a very enfeebled state.  Of course she should have been under skilled teaching the six years, but, late as it is, we couldn’t think of giving up a child who can talk, use her right hand, dress herself, go upon errands, recognise colours, wash dishes; who is apparently neither vicious nor cunning, but who, on the contrary, has lived four years under the same roof with Mrs. S. Cora Grubb without rebellion or violence or treachery!  Why, dear girls, such a task, if it did not appeal to one on the moral, certainly would on the intellectual, side.  Marm Lisa will teach us more in a year, you may be sure, than we shall teach her.  Let us keep a record of our experiments; drop all materials that seem neither to give her sensations nor wake her discriminative power, and choose others that speak to her more clearly.  Let us watch her closely, both to penetrate the secret of her condition and to protect the other children.  What a joy, what a triumph to say to her some dear day, a few years hence, “You poor, motherless bairn, we have swept away the cobwebs of your dreams, given you back your will, put a clue to things in your hand: now go on and learn to live and be mistress of your own life under God!”’

      It was at such a moment, when Mary’s voice trembled, and her eyes shone through a mist of tears like two victorious stars, that a hush fell upon the little group, and the spirit of the eternal child descended like a dove, its pure wings stirring the silence of each woman’s heart.  At such a moment, their daily work, with its round of harsh, unlovely, beautiful, discouraging, hopeful, helpful, heavenly duties, was transfigured, and so were they.  The servant was transformed by the service, and the service by the servant.  They were alone together, each heart knit to all the others by the close bond of a common vocation; and though a heretofore unknown experience, it seemed a natural one when Mistress Mary suddenly bent her head, and said softly: