Margaret Amelia straightened slightly. She faced her audience with something of her native confidence, and told them:—
“Why,” she said, “we all had some Fourth of July money, and there wasn’t going to be any way to spend it.”
A ripple of laughter ran round, and Judge Rodman’s placid pink turned to purple.
“I fear,” he observed gravely, “that the immediate nature of the event has somewhat obscured the real significance of the children’s most superior movement. Now, my child! Miss Messmore thinks that you should recite for us at least a portion of the Declaration of Independence. Will you do so?”
Margaret Amelia looked at him, down at us, away toward the waiting Wood Yard, and then at Miss Messmore.
“Is it that about ‘The shades of night were falling fast’?” she demanded.
In the roar of laughter that followed, Margaret Amelia ran down, poor child, and sobbed on Miss Messmore’s shoulder. I never think of that moment without something of a return of my swelling sympathy for her who suffered this species of martyrdom, and so needlessly. I have seen, out of schools and out of certain of our superstitions, many martyrdoms result, but never one that has touched me more.
I do not know whether something of this feeling was in the voice that we next heard speaking, or whether that which animated it was only its own bitterness. That voice sounded, clear and low-pitched, through the time’s confusion.
“I will read the Declaration of Independence,” it said.
And making his way through the crowd, and mounting the platform steps, we saw Mary Elizabeth’s father.