“I certainly do,” was the rejoinder, “and if you have improved as much inside as you have out, there is an immense gain.”
Joanne leaned her elbows on Mrs. Marriott’s lap and looked up at her candidly. “I hate to think of what a horrid little minx I was, going all to pieces over the slightest thing, crying like a baby when I couldn’t have my own way, contradicting Gradda, and lashing around like a wildcat when she brought me to task. I don’t see how you stood me.”
“Perhaps I didn’t see all those things.”
“Oh, no doubt I didn’t show you the ugly side, and that was being double-faced, wasn’t it?”
“Not altogether. I think your eyes weren’t opened to some things which you have learned since. That is the way it goes all through life. Every now and then we turn a page and perceive some bit of knowledge which has not been revealed to us before, then we wonder why our perceptions have been so blunted to a fact which suddenly seems perfectly clear to us. I think we keep on learning to the very day of our death.”
Joanne laid her cheek against her friend’s hand. “I hope that is true, for I realize I have a lot to learn. The more I do learn the more I discover how ignorant I am, and a year ago I rather prided myself upon being quite a clever somebody, just because I had travelled a little and knew a smattering of one or two languages. I certainly was a sillybilly. I despise conceited people.”
Mrs. Marriott smiled. “When did you begin to learn all this wisdom?”
Joanne reflected for a moment. “I think I began with Bob. When he told me about the girls he knew and all they could do, I felt I was a po’ ignorant creetur, as Unc’ Aaron would say. Then when I started at school I found that younger girls were away ahead of me in certain studies, and when I tried to keep up with my classes and got all mixed up, sometimes I would cry my eyes out because I found I wasn’t up to the mark. I had a pretty hard time at first. Gradda would sympathize with me and try to keep me from school when I got down in the dumps, but Winnie would pull me up with a jerk. She gave me credit for the way I worked, but she made fun of me for being such a baby, and that was exactly what I needed.”
“Nothing better than ridicule to cure that sort of weakness; in fact, for other sorts, too.”
“Is that what you did to make Bob so manly?”