Clare said, “Mummie believes, you know, that if you think about a thing a great deal—something, I mean, that isn’t really alive, as we are—that you endow it with a sort of image of life, and that strange things can happen in this way. Gems that have been thought magical, and idols that have been worshipped for centuries, have their being. That is why she would never like to have a Buddha in her house; she would think it would feel neglected. It would suffer and be cold, and its suffering would stream from it, and affect others. Besides, the wrongfulness it would be, to treat something that a great many people think sacred, merely as an ornament, or a curiosity.”
“I had a brooch once,” said Miss Ross, “that had a life of its own. It had many other things to do beside being my brooch, that was quite certain. I first found out it was a person by its evidently hearing what I said. It was a gold brooch, fashioned like an instep, or a curved willow leaf, and the pin worked on a principle evolved ages ago by some primitive race. ‘Never,’ said I one morning, in a moment of impatience—‘never will I again use such a clumsy pin as this. It tears lace, and once inserted in any material it is almost impossible to dislodge.’ I was pricked to the bone.
“This brooch would go away for days to attend to its own business; and when I’d given up looking for it, there I would find it on my pincushion, looking me in the eye. Even my maid, a most unimaginative woman, appeared to be conscious of its ways.
“‘I see your brooch has come back, Miss,’ she would say. Finally it chose a worthier home.
“I was travelling with my parents in Italy, driving through Tuscany in our private coach. We stayed for some weeks in Florence, and during that time I used to attend Mass in one of the great churches there. I became acquainted with the old priest who officiated. One day as I was leaving the church, he said to me, ‘Signora, have you seen the gift that has been made? The blue robe that has been presented to the Madonna?’
“I re-entered the church with him, and he led me to the Lady Chapel, and my eyes rested on the carved figure representing the Virgin Mary. To celebrate the Easter festival, some one had presented new robes. I looked from the kindly face of the old priest, filled as it was with fond devotion, to the pensive face of the carved figure with the outstretched hands.
“And there, where the folds of the blue mantle were gathered full upon the breast, I saw my brooch.
“I stepped forward. ‘Ah, you notice that,’ said the Father. ‘Yes, for three weeks now we await the owner to appear. We have had notices written, and placards put about, but no one has claimed it. And so, till the festival is over, I have placed it where you see it. It is a gold brooch, therefore worthy to clasp the new robe.’
“I kept silence. I would not have cared to take it from where it now was.
“I turned to go. A ray from one of the lighted candles glinted on the surface of the gold. Clearly, thought I, a signal of recognition. I knew its ways.