Into the Midst of a Group of Mariners

Little pearl had quitted her mother's side and was playing at her own will about the market place. She made the sombre crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray, even as a bird of bright plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage. If the minister's voice had not kept her there, there would nevertheless have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot. Whenever pearl saw anything to excite her ever active and wandering curiosity, she flew thitherward. Thence with native audacity, but still with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners; they gazed one ringly and admiringly at pearl