Mary read on through the chapter, through the next wonderful prayer; her face grew solemnly transparent, as of an angel; for her soul was lifted from earth by the words, and walked with Christ far above all things, over that starry pavement where each footstep is on a world.
The greatest moral effects are like those of music, not wrought out by sharp-sided intellectual propositions, but melted in by a divine fusion, by words that have mysterious indefinite fulness of meaning, made living by sweet voices, which seem to be the out-throbbings of angelic hearts; so one verse in the Bible read by a mother in some hour of tender prayer has a significance deeper and higher than the most elaborate of sermons, the most acute of arguments.
Verginie Frontignac sat as one divinely enchanted, while that sweet voice read on; and when the silence fell between them she gave a long sigh as we do when sweet music stops. They heard between them the soft stir of summer leaves, the distant songs of birds, the breezy hum when some afternoon wind shivered through many branches, and the silver sea chimed in; Verginie rose at last, and kissed Mary on the forehead. ‘That is a beautiful book,’ she said, ‘and to read it all by one’s self must be lovely; I cannot understand why it should be dangerous; it has not injured you.
‘Sweet saint,’ she added, ‘let me stay with you; you shall read to me every day; do you know I came here to get you to take me; I want you to show me how to find peace where you do; will you let me be your sister?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mary, with a cheek brighter than it had been for many a day; her heart feeling a throb of more real human pleasure than for long months.
‘Will you get your mamma to let me stay?’ said Verginie, with the bashfulness of a child; ‘haven’t you a little place like yours, with white curtains, and sanded floor, to give to poor little Verginie to learn to be good in?’
‘Why, do you really want to stay here with us,’ said Mary, ‘in this little house?’
‘Do I really?’ said Virginie, mimicking her voice with a start of her old playfulness; ‘don’t I really? Come now, mimi, coax the good mamma for me, tell her I shall try to be very good. I shall help you with the spinning; you know I spin beautifully,—and I shall make butter, and milk the cow, and set the tables. Oh, I will be so useful, you can’t spare me!’
‘I should love to have you dearly,’ said Mary, warmly; ‘but you would soon be dull for want of society here.’
‘Quelle idée! ma petite drole,’ said the lady, who with the mobility of her nation had already recovered some of the saucy mocking grace that was habitual to her, as she began teasing Mary with a thousand little childish motions. ‘Indeed, mimi, you must keep me hid up here, or may be the wolf will find me and eat me up; who knows?’ Mary looked at her with inquiring eyes.