rtainly have wrecked his
pride--the great beast! Here Mrs. Makebelieve grew very angry: her
black eyes blazed, her great nose grew thin and white and her hands
went leaping in fury. "You're not in Court now, you jackanapes
you,--said I, with his whiskers and his baton, and his feet that were
bigger than anything in the world except his ignorant self-conceit.
'Have you a daughter, mam, said he, what's her age, mam, said he, is
she a good girl, mam, said he?'--but she had settled him,--and that
woman was prouder of him than a king would be of his crown! never
mind," said Mrs. Makebelieve, and she darted fiercely up and down the
room, tearing pieces off the atmosphere and throwing them behind her.

In a few minutes, however, she sat down on the floor and drew her
daughter's head to her breast, and then, staring into the scrap of
fire, she counseled Mary wisely on many affairs of life and the
conduct of a girl under all kinds of circumstances--to be adequate in
spirit if not in physique: that was her theme. Never be a servant in
your heart, said she. To work is nothing; the king on his throne, the
priest kneeling before the Holy Altar, all people in all places had to
work, but no person at all need be a servant. One worked and was paid,
and went away keeping the integrity of one's soul unspotted and
serene. If an employer was wise or good or kind Mrs. Makebelieve was
prepared to accord such a person instant and humble reverence. She
would work for such a one until the nails dropped off her fingers and
her feet crumpled up under her body; but a policeman or a rich
person, or a person who ordered one about...! until she died and was
buried in the depths of the world, she would never give in to such a
person or admit anything but their thievishness and ill-breeding. Bad
manners to the like of them, said she, and might have sailed
boisterously away upon an ocean of curses but that Mary turned her
face closer to her breast and began to speak.

For suddenly there had come to Mary a vision of peace: like a green
island in the sea it was, like a white cloud on a broiling day; the
sheltered life where all mundane preoccupations were far away, where
ambition and hope and struggle were incredibly distant foolishness.
Lowly and peaceful and unjaded was that life: she could see the nuns
pacing quietly in their enclosed gardens, fingering their beads as
they went to and fro and praying noiselessly for the sins of the
world, or walking