HOW MARGERY WONDERED.
One bright morning, late in March, little Margery put on her hood and her Highland plaid shawl, and went trudging across the beach. It was the first time she had been trusted out alone, for Margery was a little girl; nothing about her was large, except her round gray eyes, which had yet scarcely opened upon half a dozen springs and summers.
There was a pale mist on the far-off sea and sky, and up around the sun were white clouds edged with the hues of pinks and violets. The sunshine and the mild air made Margery's very heart feel warm, and she let the soft wind blow aside her Highland shawl, as she looked across the waters at the sun, and wondered!
For, somehow, the sun had never looked before as it did to-day;—it seemed like a great golden flower bursting out of its pearl-lined calyx,—a flower without a stem! Or was there a strong stem away behind it in the sky, that reached down below the sea, to a root, nobody could guess where?
Margery did not stop to puzzle herself about the answer to her question, for now the tide was coming in, and the waves, little at first, but growing larger every moment, were crowding up, along the sand and pebbles, laughing, winking, and whispering, as they tumbled over each other, like thousands of children hurrying home from somewhere, each with its own precious little secret to tell. Where did the waves come from? Who was down there under the blue wall of the horizon, with the hoarse, hollow voice, urging and pushing them across the beach to her feet? And what secret was it they were lisping to each other with their pleasant voices? O, what was there beneath the sea, and beyond the sea, so deep, so broad, and so dim too, away off where the white ships, that looked smaller than sea-birds, were gliding out and in?
But while Margery stood still for a moment on a dry rock and wondered, there came a low, rippling warble to her ear from a cedar-tree on the cliff above her. It had been a long winter, and Margery had forgotten that there were birds, and that birds could sing. So she wondered again what the music was. And when she saw the bird perched on a yellow-brown bough, she wondered yet more. It was only a bluebird, but then it was the first bluebird Margery had ever seen. He fluttered among the prickly twigs, and looked as if he had grown out of them, as the cedar-berries had, which were dusty-blue, the color of his coat. But how did the music get into his throat? And after it was in his throat, how could it untangle itself, and wind itself off so evenly? And where had the bluebird flown from, across the snow-banks, down to the shore of the blue sea? The waves sang a welcome to him, and he sang a welcome to the waves; they seemed to know each other well; and the ripple and the warble sounded so much alike, the bird and the wave must both have learned their music of the same teacher. And Margery kept on wondering as she stepped between the song of the bluebird and the echo of the sea, and climbed a sloping bank, just turning faintly green in the spring sunshine.