Fannie stood laughing, her sense of the ridiculous overcoming any pity she might have felt for the girl. Ernestine hesitated a moment. She was daintiness itself, and the sight of the soiled clothes, belonging to no one knew whom, was not an attractive one. But for three years she had been earnestly striving to follow the Golden Rule, so she righted the basket, picked up the soiled clothes, rolled them together more tightly, and replaced them in the basket by the time the child returned with the recaptured napkins. She also helped put these in, and with a few kind words sent the girl on her way far happier than she would have been if obliged to struggle with her burden alone.
Fannie had moved on some distance, much ashamed of being mixed up in such a scene to even so slight a degree, and feeling inclined to leave Ernestine entirely, for she knew that her mother would have characterized the whole affair as "plebeian," and she felt half angry with Ernestine.
Ernestine righted the basket.—See page 46.
When the latter rejoined her, she said with some irritation, "However could you touch those horrid, dirty clothes or go near that dirty child?"
"I didn't like to touch them," said Ernestine simply; "but Christ did a great many things he did not like to do."
"Well, you are a queer girl, Ernestine! I'm sure I can't make up my mind that it is my duty to be pleasant to every dirty little beggar who comes along. There might have been small-pox in those clothes!"
Ernestine smiled at that, but made no reply, and the two walked on in silence till they reached the corner where they separated.
Fannie went on, swinging her books by the strap, and thinking that dirt could not be so repulsive to Ernestine as to her; but if she could have seen Ernestine go straight to the kitchen sink the minute she reached home, before she stopped to touch anything, Fannie might have realized something of the self-restraint her friend had exercised in the matter. But few of us can be brought to believe that things we find unpleasant are often quite as unpleasant to other people.
Friday afternoon came, and five o'clock found the four girls entering a side yard in a pleasant if not an aristocratic neighborhood. They went up the stairs leading from a side hall, and were met at the top by Ernestine, who was holding open the door.