Our Lady of the Hills - Page 2

crestfallen, but a few minutes later
jumped down again from the ditch, and cried angrily, "Dad's a divil,
mum's a divil, and I'm a divil, and you are only an ordinary lady," and
having flung a handful of mud and pebbles ran away sobbing. When my
pretty Protestant had come to her own home she found that she had
dropped the tassels of her parasol. A year later she was by chance upon
the mountain, but wearing now a plain black dress, and met the child
who had first called her the Virgin out o' the picture, and saw the
tassels hanging about the child's neck, and said, "I am the lady you
met last year, who told you about Christ." "No, you are not! no, you
are not! no, you are not!" was the passionate reply. And after all, it
was not my pretty Protestant, but Mary, Star of the Sea, still walking
in sadness and in beauty upon many a mountain and by many a shore, who
cast those tassels at the feet of the child. It is indeed fitting that
man pray to her who is the mother of peace, the mother of dreams, and
the mother of purity, to leave them yet a little hour to do good and
evil in, and to watch old Time telling the rosary of the stars.