"
"What is it," asked the old lady, "that you don't understand?"
"How can prayers said over and over again like that be any good?"
Mistress Margaret was silent for a moment.
"I saw young Mrs. Martin last week," she said, "with her little girl in
her lap. Amy had her arms round her mother's neck, and was being rocked
to and fro; and every time she rocked she said 'Oh, mother.'"
"But then," said Isabel, after a moment's silence, "she was only a
child."
"'Except ye become like little children--'" quoted Mistress Margaret
softly--"you see, my Isabel, we are nothing more than children with God
and His Blessed Mother. To say 'Hail Mary, Hail Mary,' is the best way of
telling her how much we love her. And then this string of beads is like
Our Lady's girdle, and her children love to finger it, and whisper to
her. And then we say our paternosters, too; and all the while we are
talking she is shewing us pictures of her dear Child, and we look at all
the great things He did for us, one by one; and then we turn the page and
begin again."
"I see," said Isabel; and after a moment or two's silence Mistress
Margaret got up and went into the house.
The girl sat still with her hands clasped round her knee. How strange and
different this religion was to the fiery gospel she had heard last year
at Northampton from the harsh stern preacher, at whose voice a veil
seemed to rend and show a red-hot heaven behind! How tender and simple
this was--like a blue summer's sky with drifting clouds! If only it was
true! If only there were a great Mother whose girdle was of beads strung
together, which dangled into every Christian's hands; whose face bent
down over every Christian's bed; and whose mighty and tender arms that
had held her Son and God were still stretched out beneath her other
children.
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