Page:Wiggin--Marm Lisa.djvu/170

158 "'Mr. Man! Mr. Man!  It is Mr. Man when he couldn’t read his letter!' cried the children.  'Why doesn’t he come to see us any more, Miss Rhoda?'

"'He is doing some work for Miss Mary, I think,' answered Rhoda, with a teasing look at me.

"Lisa came back just then, and rubbed her cheek against my arm. 'I went to the corner,' she whispered, 'but he wasn’t there; he is never there now!'

"It was the remembrance of this astonishing morning that gave me courage in the later lesson. She seems to have no idea of numbers—there will be great difficulty there,—but she begins to read well, and the marvel of it is that she has various talents!  She is weak, uneducated; many things are either latent or altogether missing in her as yet, and I do not know how many of them will appear, nor how long a process it will be; but her mind is full of compensations, and that is the last thing I expected.  It is only with infinite struggle that she learns anything, though she is capable of struggle, and that is a good deal to say; but she has besides a precious heritage of instincts and insights, hitherto unsus-