Marie liked to think how each stone in that beautiful crown, which glowed above her in the sunsets and sunrises, and at night was itself crowned with stars, had been once a common gray stone like the fallen ones which lay on the ground outside, useless and shapeless.
Of these stones Marie did not like to think. She hoped none of them had ever been in that glorious crown. She did not think it anything but a glory for any stone to be made the lowest stone in the uttermost buttress of the Cathedral. Indeed, the greatest glory, perhaps, for any stone was to be a hidden stone; altogether hidden, deep beneath the earth, from human eyes. For such were the very foundation and corner stones themselves, on which, as on the Unknown Architect, the whole visible glory rested. But to be a fallen stone, chipped, and marred, and useless, and crumbling into dust, when it might have been a resting-place for sunbeams, and for birds to sing welcomes to the sunbeams from, was a thought which made Marie very sad, and gave a tremulous depth to her tones when she prayed, "Lead us not into temptation," or tenderly coaxed little Mark not to render railings for his grandmother's railings, or to use the rough words which he learned in the streets.
The painted windows of the Cathedral were rather a distress and perplexity to Marie. Sometimes, it was true, the upper panes glittered a little in the noontide sunbeams; but, for the most part, they looked dark and confused. If they had not been painted, she sometimes wistfully thought, she might have caught glimpses of the glories inside. But then, of course, they were painted for the people inside, not for those without.
If she could only once creep Inside to see and to listen!
That was the great longing of her life.
If only once she could feel the great roof bending over her, and the walls embracing her; if, instead of straining to catch some clear melody which she might sing over in her heart, out of the dim labyrinth of those sweet and solemn sounds which reached her where she lay; if she could only once be among them, hearing the music, knowing the words, making melody in her heart among the worshippers! Marie thought she could live happy for the rest of her life on the remembrance; on the remembrance and the great Hope it would light up.
She did not speak of this longing. She lived, poor little one, with so keen a sense that her life was necessarily a burden on every one around her, partly awakened by Agatha's very unconcealed complainings, and much more by her father's weary looks when he came home at night with his water-jars and his few hard-earned pence and sat down to his scanty meal, that she could never bear by look or word to express a wish for anything that was not absolutely needed or freely offered.
All the more, because she knew so well that the father's love (which was mother's and father's love to her, and so interpreted to her the Our Father) would hold any burden light and any sacrifice possible to gain the motherless child a pleasure or an alleviation of suffering.
So the longing lay deep hidden in her heart, but never came from her lips, until, one autumn when she seemed to grow brighter than usual, and a flush came on her pale face sometimes towards evening, one morning her father, looking fondly at her, said,—
"Child! by Christmas, who knows but we might have thee singing the Christmas hymns inside the Cathedral!"