Marjorie was very anxious to
"succeed." She scribbled awhile, making a comma and a dash, a
parenthesis, an interrogation point, an asterisk and a line of asterisks!
But the sense was not changed; there was nobody new in the stage-coach
and nobody did anything new. Then she rewrote it again, giving the little
child to the foreigner and lady; she wanted the child to have a father
and mother, even if the father were a foreigner and did not speak
English; she called the foreigner Mr. Angelo, and imagined him to be a
brother of the celebrated Michael Angelo; making a dive into the shallow
depths of her knowledge of Italian nomenclature she selected a name for
the child, a little girl, of course--Corrinne would do, or it might be a
boy and named for his uncle Michael. In what age of the world had Michael
Angelo lived? At the same time with Petrarch and Galileo, and Tasso
and--did she know about any other Italians? Oh, yes. Silvio
Pellico,--wasn't he in prison and didn't he write about it? And was not
the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy? Was that one of the Seven Wonders of
the World? And weren't there Seven Wise Men of Greece? And wasn't there a
story about the Seven Sleepers? But weren't they in Asia? And weren't the
churches in Revelation in Asia? And wasn't the one at Laodicea lukewarm?
And did people mix bread with lukewarm water in summer as well as winter?
And wasn't it queer--why how had she got there? But it _was_ queer for
the oriental king to refuse to believe and say it wasn't so--that water
couldn't become hard enough for people to walk on it! And it was funny
for the East Indian servant to be alarmed because the butter was
"spoiled," just because when they were up in the mountains it became hard
and was not like oil as it was down in Calcutta! And that was where Henry
Martyn went, and he dressed all in white, and his face was so lovely and
pure, like an angel's; and angels _were_ like young men, for at the
resurrection didn't it say they were young men! Or was it some other
time? And how do you spell _resurrection_? Was that the word that had one
_s_ and two _r's_ in it? And how would you write two _r's?_ Would
punctuation teach you that? Was _B_ a word and could you spell it?
"Well, Marjorie?"
"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Marjorie.
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