tilling of a soil where the only plants were little people "all in a row" was something beyond credence.
The truth about Mistress Mary lay somewhere in the via media between the criticisms of her skeptical friends and the encomiums of her enthusiastic admirers. In forsaking society temporarily she had no rooted determination to forsake it eternally, and if the incense of love which her neophytes forever burned at her shrine savored somewhat of adoration, she disarmed jealousy by frankly avowing her unworthiness and lack of desire to wear the martyr’s crown. Her happiness in her chosen vocation made it impossible, she argued, to regard her as a person worthy of canonization; though the neophytes were always sighing to
"have that little head of hers
Painted upon a background of pale gold."
She had been born with a capacity for helping lame dogs over stiles; accordingly, her pathway, from a very early age, had been bestrewn with stiles, and processions of lame dogs ever limping towards them. Her vocation had called her so imperiously that disobedience was impossible. It is all very
