“Isn’t that the secret of true sympathy? If you were in great sorrow and went to a friend, would you not like to have the comfort adapted to your nature, and wants? The other would be asking for bread and receiving a stone.”
“It is very good of course, really noble. But it would fret me to do favors for people who did not interest me one bit. Now I can understand your sister’s enjoying her day at the Churchills, even if she was asked partly to entertain an invalid. They were refined, agreeable people. But that she should give up going to ride with Miss Fairlie yesterday afternoon, to make a bonnet for that woman who lost her baby, and who wasn’t a bit thankful—”
“She was thankful,” I interposed.
“Stuart went with your sister, and he said she found fault because it wasn’t the right shape, and because there was ribbon used instead of crape. I should have smashed up the thing and thrown it into the fire, and told her to suit herself.”
I laughed a little, the remark was so characteristic.
“We get used to people’s ways after a while,” I said. “Mrs. Day never is quite satisfied. If a thing had only been a little different. And very likely next week she will show the bonnet to some neighbor and praise Fanny’s thoughtfulness and taste. You see no one happened to think of a bonnet until it was pretty late.”
“But why could she not have been thankful on the spot? It was ungracious, to say the least.”
“That is her way.”
“I’d get her out of it, or I wouldn’t do any favors for her.”
“I wonder if we are always thankful on the spot, and when the favor doesn’t quite suit us?”