for reading the inspired
record of the New Testament.

She had been sitting out in the little walled garden in front of the
Dower House one morning on an early summer day after her father's death,
and Mistress Margaret had come out in her black dress and stood for a
moment looking at her irresolutely, framed in the dark doorway. Then she
had come slowly across the grass, and Isabel had seen for the first time
in her fingers a string of ivory beads. Mistress Margaret sat down on a
garden chair a little way from her, and let her hands sink into her lap,
still holding the beads. Isabel said nothing, but went on reading.
Presently she looked up again, and the old lady's eyes were half-closed,
and her lips just moving; and the beads passing slowly through her
fingers. She looked almost like a child dreaming, in spite of her
wrinkles and her snowy hair; the pale light of a serene soul lay on her
face. This did not look like the mechanical performance that Isabel had
always associated with the idea of beads. So the minutes passed away;
every time that Isabel looked up there was the little white face with the
long lashes lying on the cheek, and the crown of snowy hair and lace, and
the luminous look of a soul in conscious communion with the unseen.

When the old lady had finished, she twisted the beads about her fingers
and opened her eyes. Isabel had an impulse to speak.

"Mistress Margaret," she said, "may I ask you something?"

"Of course, my darling," the old lady said.

"I have never seen you use those before--I cannot understand them."

"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
talkin