Everybody said Mary was growing up a sweet girl, more “lovesome” and womanly than had once been expected. In truth Mary thought so herself. Plenty of well-meaning but injudicious people had told her she was pretty; and she knew that Mrs. Lee liked to look at her face because it was so “expressive,” and Mrs. Patten because it was so “thoughtful,” and somebody else because it was so “intelligent.” Ethel had a figure like a roly-poly pudding; but Mary was tall and slight, and even Mrs. Prim admitted that she was “graceful.”
One Sunday morning early in May she sat in church, apparently paying strict attention to the sermon, but really thinking.
“I dare say, now, Mrs. Townsend is looking at me, and wishing Fanny were more like me. Nobody else of my age sits as still as I do, except Sadie Stockwell, and she has a stiff spine. There’s Major Patten, I remember he said once to father, ‘Dr. Gray, your second girl is a child to be proud of.’ I know he did, for I was coming into the room and heard him.”
Directly after morning services came Sunday school, and Mary was in Mrs. Lee’s class. Mrs. Lee was an enthusiastic young woman, fond of all her scholars, but it was easy to see that Mary was her prime favorite. Mrs. Gray’s class of boys—Phil being the youngest—sat in the next seat. The lesson to-day was short, and after recitation Mrs. Lee showed her own class and Mrs. Gray’s some pictures which her uncle had brought her from China.
“What is that queer thing?” said Fanny, as she and Mary touched bonnets over one of the pictures.
“That is called a baby-tower. My uncle says it is a good representation of the dreadful place they drop girl-babies into sometimes. You know girls are lightly esteemed in heathen countries.”
“Drop girl-babies into it?” asked Blanche Jones. “Doesn’t it hurt them?”
“Not much, I believe; but it kills them.”
“Oh, Mrs. Lee!” It was Mary who spoke, in tones of horror.
“The tower is half full of lime, and the lime stops their breath. So I presume they hardly suffer at all.”