"Whose living?"
"Sharp—as a knife that's just cut through a lemon! Ours, then, if you please; us girls', for instance."
"You haven't done much of your living yet, my dear." The tone was gentle, as of one who looked down from such a height of years that she felt tenderly the climbing that had been, for those who had it yet to do.
"We're as busy at it, too, as we can be. But sometimes I've mistrusted something like what I discovered very indignantly one day when I was four years old, and fancied I was making a petticoat, sewing through and through a bit of flannel. The thread hadn't any knot in it!"
"That was very well, too, until you knew just where to put the stitches that should stay."
"Which brings us to our subject of the morning, as the sermons say sometimes, when they're half through, or ought to be. There are all kinds of stitches,—embroidery, and plain over-and-over, and whippings, and darns! When are we to make our knot and begin? and which kind are we to do?"
"Most lives find occasion, more or less, for each. Practiced fingers will know how to manage all."
"But—it's—the—proportion!" cried Sin, in a crescendo that ended with an emphasis that was nearly a little scream.
"I think that, when one looks to what is really needed most and first, will arrange itself," said Miss Craydocke. "Something gets crowded out, with us all. It depends upon what, and how, and with what willingness we let it go."
"Now we come to the superlative sort of people,—the extra good ones, who let everything go that isn't solid duty; all the ornament of life,—good looks,—tidiness even,—and everything that's the least bit jolly, and that don't keep your high-mindedness on the strain. I want to be low-minded—weak-minded at least—now and then. I can't bear ferociously elevated people, who won't say a word that don't count; people that talk about their time being interrupted (as if their time wasn't everybody else's time, too), because somebody comes in once in a while for a friendly call; and who go about the streets as if they were so intent upon some tremendous good work, or big thinking, that it would be dangerous even to bow to a common sinner, for fear of being waylaid and hindered. I know people like that; and all I've to say is that, if they're to make up the heavenly circles, I'd full as lief go down lower, where they're kind of social!"