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Page 18
"We 're not strangers," asserted the voice, calmly; "we are as familiar
to you as your shadow,--in fact, more so, come to think of it. You
have always known us, and so has your mother. She 'd trust you to us,
never fear! Will you come?"
Marjorie considered a moment, and then said: "Well, if you're perfectly
sure you 'll take care of me, and that you 'll bring me back in time, I
guess I will."
No sooner had she spoken than she felt herself raised from her place
and borne away out of the crowded room in which she was,--out, out into
the world, as free as the air itself, and being carried along as though
she were a piece of light thistle-down on the back of a summer breeze.
That she was travelling very fast, she could see by the way in which
she out-stripped the clouds hurrying noiselessly across the sky. One
thing she knew,--whatever progress she was making was due, not to
herself (for she was making absolutely no effort at all, seeming to be
merely reclining at ease), but was the result of some other exertion
than her own. She was not frightened in the least, but, as she grew
accustomed to the peculiar mode of locomotion, became more and more
curious to discover the source of it.
She looked about her, but nothing was visible save the azure sky above
her and the green earth beneath. She seemed to be quite alone. The
sense of her solitude began to fill her with a deep awe, and she grew
strangely uneasy: as she thought of herself, a frail little girl, amid
the vastness of the big world.
How weak and helpless she was,--scarcely more important than one of the
wild-flowers she had used to tread on when she was n't being hurried
through space by the means of--she knew not what. To be sure, she was
pretty; but then they had been pretty too, and she had stepped on them,
and they had died, and she had gone away and no one had ever known.
"Oh, dear!" she thought, "it would be the easiest thing in the world
for me to be killed (even if I _am_ pretty), and no one would know it
at all. I wonder what is going to happen? I wish I had n't come."
"Don't be afraid!" said the familiar voice, suddenly. "We promised to
take care of you. We are truth itself. Don't be afraid!"
"But I _am_ afraid," insisted Marjorie, in a petulant way, "and I 'm
getting afraider every minute. I don't know where I 'm going, nor how
I 'm being taken there, and I don't like it one bit. Who are you,
anyway?"
For a moment she received no reply; but then the voice said: "Hush!
don't speak so irreverently. You are talking to the emissaries of a
great sovereign,--his Majesty the Sun."
"Is _he_ carrying me along?" inquired Marjorie presently, with deep
respect.
"Oh, dear, no," responded the voice; "we are doing that. We are his
vassals,--you call us beams. He never condescends to leave his
place,--he could not; if he were to desert his throne for the smallest
fraction of a second, one could not imagine the amount of disaster that
would ensue. But we do his bidding, and hasten north and south and
east and west, just as he commands. It is a very magnificent thing to
be a king--"
"Of course," interrupted Marjorie; "one can wear such elegant clothes,
that shine and sparkle like everything with gold and jewels, and have
lots of servants and--"
"No, no," corrected the beam, warmly. "Where did you get such a wrong
idea of things? That is not at all where the splendor of being a king
exists. It does not lie in the mere fact of one 's being born to a
title and able to command. That would be very little if that were all.
It is not in the gold and jewels and precious stuffs that go to adorn a
king that his grandeur lies, but in the things which these things
represent. We give a king the rarest and the most costly, because it
is fitting that the king should have the best,--that he is worthy of
the best; that only the best will serve one who is so great and
glorious. They mean nothing in themselves; they only describe his
greatness. The things that one sees are not of importance; it is the
things that they are put there to represent. Do you understand? I
don't believe you do. I 'll try to make it more clear to you, like a
true sunbeam. Look at one of your earth-kings, for instance. He is
nothing but a man just like the rest of you; but what makes him great
is that he is supposed to have more truth, more wisdom, more justice
and power. If he has not these things, then he would better never have
been a king; for that only places him where every one can see how
unworthy he is,--makes his lacks only more conspicuous. Your word
_king_ comes from another word, _k�nning_; which comes from still
another word, _canning_, that means _ableman_. If he is not really an
ableman, it were better he had never worn ermine. And there, too;
ermine is only a fur, you know. It is nothing in itself but fur; but
you have come to think of it as an emblem of royalty because kings use
it. So you see, Marjorie, a thing is not of any worth really except as
it represents something that is great and noble, something _true_."
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