DORA (audibly aside, to MARY, who is brought to pause). You know
you are never expected to answer, Mary.
L. I'm sure this is easy enough. What do you mean by a group of
people?
MARY. Three or four together, or a good many together, like the
caps in these crystals.
L. But when a great many persons get together they don't take the
shape of one person?
(MARY still at pause.)
ISABEL. No, because they can't; but you know the crystals can; so
why shouldn't they?
L. Well, they don't; that is to say, they don't always, nor even
often. Look here, Isabel.
ISABEL. What a nasty ugly thing!
L. I'm glad you think it so ugly. Yet it is made of beautiful
crystals; they are a little gray and cold in color, but most of
them are clear.
ISABEL. But they're in such horrid, horrid disorder!
L. Yes; all disorder is horrid, when it is among things that are
naturally orderly. Some little girls' rooms are naturally orderly,
I suppose; or I don't know how they could live in them, if they
cry out so when they only see quartz crystals in confusion.
ISABEL. Oh! but how come they to be like that?
L. You may well ask. And yet you will always hear people talking,
as if they thought order more wonderful than disorder! It is
wonderful--as we have seen; but to me, as to you, child, the
supremely wonderful thing is that nature should ever be ruinous or
wasteful, or deathful! I look at this wild piece of
crystallization with endless astonishment.
MARY. Where does it come from?
L. The Tete Noire of Chamonix. What makes it more strange is that
it should be in a vein of fine quartz. If it were in a mouldering
rock, it would be natural enough; but in the midst of so fine
substance, here are the crystals tossed in a heap; some large,
myriads small (almost as small as dust), tumbling over each other
like a terrified crowd, and glued together by the sides, and
edges, and backs, and heads; some warped, and some pushed out and
in, and all spoiled, and each spoiling the rest.
MARY. And how flat they all are!