Page:On the Hill-top (1919).pdf/27

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"I see," said Marjorie, thoughtfully, "A single eye gives you balance and the right idea of composition in your picture, and keeps the little things from shutting off the big ones. Oh, I see! Isn't that funny?"

"What?" asked the Dream.

"Why, that's what it means by 'making mountains out of mole-hills.' If you go and lie down with your face up close to a mole-hill, it can shut out all of the mountains on earth while you stay there,—and all of the other beautiful things in the world."

"That is certainly so," said the Dream, "and while you were lying there, you would probably be getting dust in your eyes and keeping busy hating the mole that built the hill for his own home, without even knowing that you were living."

"Probably I would," said Marjorie, "when all I really had to do would be to sit up and take notice of the things over the top of it."

"And forget it," added the Dream.

Just then the girl with a sweet face came around the brow of the hill, leading by the hand a very soiled, bedraggled little child who was eating hungrily, a bit of bread. Marjorie had sprung up at the first glimpse of the girl, but when she saw the bedraggled child, she hesitated, half drawing back. The girl glanced down at the muddy little one. "She is in a pretty bad way, isn't she?" she said, smiling; "—ragged and hungry, but the raggeder and hungrier she is, the more she needs my help, doesn't she?"