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HOW THE NEW PLANT GREW.
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such favoring breezes of opportunity, such pleasure for a new leaf, joy for a bud, gratitude for a bloom! What an atmosphere in which to grow towards knowledge and goodness! Was it any wonder that the little people "all in a row" responded to the genius of Mistress Mary's influence? They used to sing a song called The Light Bird, in which some one, all unknown to the children, would slip into the playground with a bit of broken looking-glass, and suddenly a radiant fluttering disk of light would appear on the wall, and dance up and down, above and below, hither and yon, like a winged sunbeam. The children held out longing arms and sang to it coaxingly. Sometimes it quivered over Mistress Mary's head, and fired every delicate point of her steel tiara with such splendor that the Irish babies almost felt like crossing themselves. At such times, those deux petits cœurs secs, Atlantic and Pacific, and all the other full-fledged and half-fledged scapegraces, forgot to be naughty, and the millennium was foreshadowed. The neophytes declared Mistress Mary a bit of a magician. Somehow or other, the evil imps in the children shrank away, abashed by the soft surprise