"You never did have green hair, Mary Hutchins, not even at your prettiest, and that wouldn't be much, and as for flaming eyes, you couldn't scorch a potato, not if your dinner depended on it, and if you ever did sing it must have been worse than a flock of jaybirds. Talk about that old Greek who moved trees when he played! I should think your singing would be enough to make all the woodpiles in Virginia run away. The more you educate that child, Mary Hutchins, the less she knows. The Lord gave her more learning to begin with than she'll ever get from you, and if you go on telling her such trash she'll forget all she ever did know. I heard you yesterday telling her about the ghosts of the children of Israel that keep on crossing the Red Sea. Now I want you to know, Mary Hutchins, that when those Jews crossed the Red Sea once they were on the other side for good and they don't go on walking through that water as if the Lord had nothing to do but take care of them every time they chose to go wading. There is such a thing as trusting the Lord once too often, and the folks that know Him as well as the children of Israel did aren't going to take risks like that on Him. First thing you know you'll have that child seeing ghosts, and you know well enough that people who see ghosts aren't ever likely to see anything that's worth looking at."
I was often troubled in my mind between a confidence in "Miss Mary," which I wished to preserve unshaken, and the force of Miss Sophia's arguments.
The germ of pathos latent in my undeveloped mind was fostered by the story of Miss Sophia's lost vision, which ran thus:
She was visiting at the home of a friend who owned a parrot of unusual brightness of mind and independence of character. Its mistress had a little wooden whistle like those you may recall having seen rural schoolboys whittle out and use for the production of music somewhat shrill in tone but well adapted to please the taste of the juvenile artist. The lady would whistle to the bird, which would answer her in tones that obviously fell short of its ambition. The mistress had a whistle like her own made for the parrot who, marvelous to relate, acquired a high degree of skill in its use and was proud of the achievement.