Child Life in Prose

by Unknown

The grass was surely beginning to grow! There were fresh, juicy shoots running up among the withered blades of last year, as if in hopes of bringing them back to life; and closer down she saw the sharp points of new spears peeping from their sheaths. And scattered here and there were small dark green leaves folded around buds shut up so tight that only those who had watched them many seasons could tell what flowers were to be let out of their safe prisons by and by. So no one could blame Margery for not knowing that they were only common things,—mouse-ear, dandelions, and cinquefoil; nor for stooping over the tiny buds, and wondering.

What made the grass come up so green out of the black earth? And how did the buds know when it was time to take off their little green hoods, and see what there was in the world around them? And how came they to be buds at all? Did they bloom in another world before they sprung up here?—and did they know, themselves, what kind of flowers they should blossom into? Had flowers souls, like little girls, that would live in another world when their forms had faded away from this?

Margery thought she should like to sit down on the bank and wait beside the buds until they opened; perhaps they would tell her their secret if the very first thing they saw was her eyes watching them. One bud was beginning to unfold; it was streaked with yellow in little stripes that she could imagine became wider every minute. But she would not touch it, for it seemed almost as much alive as herself. She only wondered, and wondered!

But the dash of the waves grew louder, and the bluebird had not stopped singing yet, and the sweet sounds drew Margery's feet down to the beach again, where she played with the shining pebbles, and sifted the sand through her plump fingers, stopping now and then to wonder a little about everything, until she heard her mother's voice calling her, from the cottage on the cliff.

Then Margery trudged home across the shells and pebbles with a pleasant smile dimpling her cheeks, for she felt very much at home in this large, wonderful world, and was happy to be alive, although she neither could have told, nor cared to know, the reason why. But when her mother unpinned the little girl's Highland shawl, and took off her hood, she said, "O mother, do let me live on the door-step! I don't like houses to stay in. What makes everything so pretty and so glad? Don't you like to wonder?"

Margery's mother was a good woman. But then there was all the housework to do, and if she had thoughts, she did not often let them wander outside the kitchen door. And just now she was baking some gingerbread, which was in danger of getting burned in the oven. So she pinned the shawl around the child's neck again, and left her on the door-step, saying to herself, as she returned to her work, "Queer child! I wonder what kind of a woman she will be!"

But Margery sat on the door-step, and wondered, as the sea sounded louder, and the sunshine grew warmer around her. It was all so strange, and grand, and beautiful! Her heart danced with joy to the music that went echoing through the wide world from the roots of the sprouting grass to the great golden blossom of the sun.

And when the round, gray eyes closed that night, at the first peep of the stars, the angels looked down and wondered over Margery. For the wisdom of the wisest being God has made ends in wonder; and there is nothing on earth so wonderful as the budding soul of a little child.

Lucy Larcom.