Page:Wiggin--Marm Lisa.djvu/72

60 she stood there with quivering hands and wet eyes, the first sense of conscious victory written on her inscrutable brow, and within the turbid, clouded brain the memory of a long struggle, and a hint, at least, of the glory she had achieved.

Rhoda took the square of neat cardboard with the precious red circle that meant so much, and ran into the playground with it, hugging it to her heart, and crying and laughing over it like a child.

When she came back Mistress Mary put her arm round Lisa’s waist and said to the whole great family: "Children, after trying hard, for ever so long, Lisa has sewed this lovely picture all by herself. There is not a wrong stitch, and one side is as neat as the other.  What shall we say?"

"Three cheers! The Chinese must go!" shouted Pat Higgins, a patriotic person of five years, whose father was an organizer of sand-lot meetings.

All the grown-ups laughed at this unexpected suggestion, but the cheers were given with a good will, and Marm Lisa, her mind stirred to its depths by the unwonted emotion, puzzled out the meaning of them and hid it in her heart.