I knew she would think it a beautiful idea,--marking each day with a pearl when its duties had been well done, but I was half-afraid that she would think it conceited of me--conceited for me to count that any of my days were perfect enough to be marked with a pearl.

But it wasn't that I thought them so.

It was only that I tried my hardest to make the most of them,--in my classes and every way, you know." As Lloyd went on, telling of the times she had failed and times she had succeeded, Mary felt as if she were listening to the confessions of a white Easter lily.

It seemed perfectly justifiable to her that Lloyd should have had tantrums, and stormed at the doctor when he forbade her going back to school after the Christmas vacation, and that she should have cried and moped and made everybody around her miserable for days.
Mary's overweening admiration for the Princess carried her to the point of feeling that everybody _ought_ to be miserable when she was unhappy.
In Mary's opinion it was positively saintly of her the way she took up her rosary again after awhile, trying to string it with tokens of days spent unselfishly at home; days unstained by regrets and tears and idle repinings for what could not be helped.
Mary laughed over the story of one hard-earned pearl, the day spent in making pies and cleaning house for the disagreeable old Mrs.Perkins, who didn't want to be reformed, and who wouldn't stay clean.
"I haven't the faintest idea why I told you all this," said Lloyd at last, once more lifting the string to watch the light shimmer along its lustrous length.

"But now you see why I prize this little rosary so highly.