In reality Mariquita did more for them than she had any idea of. They understood that in her was something higher than their understanding; that her goodness was real they did understand. It never shocked them as the "goodness" of some good people would by a first instinct have shocked them, by its uncharity, its self-conscious superiority, its selfishness, its complacence, its eagerness to assume the Divine prerogative of judgment and of punishment. They were, perhaps unconsciously, proud of her, who was so plainly never proud of herself. They knew that she was kind. They had penetration enough to be aware that if she held her own way, in some external aloofness, it was not out of cold indifference, or self-centred pride, not even out of a prudish shrinking from their roughness. They became less rough. Their behavior in her sight and hearing was not without effect upon their behavior in her absence. She taught them a reverence for woman that may only have begun in respect for herself. Almost all of them cared enough for her approval to try and become more capable of deserving it. Some of them, God who taught them knows how, became conscious of her lonely absorption in prayer, and the prairie became less empty to them. Probably none of them remained ignorant that to the girl God was life and breath, happiness and health, master and companion: the explanation of herself and of her beauty. They did not understand it all, but they saw more than they understood. The loveliness of each flower preached to Mariquita; sometimes she would sit upon the ground, her heart beating, holding in her hand one of those tiny weeds that millions of eyes can overlook without perceiving they are beautiful, insignificant in size, without any blaze of color, and realize its marvel of loveliness with a singular exultation; she would note the exquisite perfection of its minute parts--that each tiny spray was a string of stars, white, or tenderest azure, or mauve, gold-centred, a microscopic installation hidden all its life on the prairie-floor, as if falling from heaven it had grown smaller and smaller as it neared the earth. Her heart beat, I say, as she looked, and the light shining in her happy eyes was exultation at the unimaginable loveliness of God, who had imagined this minutest creature, and thought it worth while to conceive this and every other lovely thing for the house even of His children's exile and probation, their waiting-room on the upward road. So it preached to her the Uncreated Beauty, and the unbeginning, Eternal Love. As unconscious as was the little flower of its fragrance, its loveliness and its message, Mariquita, who could never have preached, was giving her message too.