“That’s where it is,” said Uncle Joshua. “My little maid, there’s things as is fitting and there’s things as isn’t fitting. Perhaps it’s fitting for London ladies to wear their hair so. Very well, then let them do it. But why should you and Agnetta and the rest copy ’em? You’re not ladies. You’re country girls with honest work to do, and proud you ought to be of it. As proud every bit as the grandest lady as ever was, who never put her hand to a useful thing in her life. I’m not saying you’re better than her. She’s got her own place, an’ her own lessons to learn, an’ she’s got to do the best she can with her life. But you’re different, because your life’s different, an’ you’ll never look like her whatever you put on your outside. If a thing isn’t fit for what it’s intended, it’ll never look well. Now, here’s Peter’s boots—I call ’em handsome.”
He lifted one of them as he spoke and put it on the table, where it seemed to take up a great deal of room. Lilac looked at it with a puzzled air; she saw nothing handsome in it. It was enormously thick and deeply wrinkled across the toes, which were turned upwards as though with many and many a weary tramp.
“I call ’em handsome,” pursued Joshua. “Because for why? Because they’re fit for ploughin’ in the stiffest soil. Because they’ll keep out wet and never give in the seams. They’re fit for what they’re meant to do. But now you just fancy,” he went on, raising one finger, “as how I’d made ’em of shiny leather, and put paper soles to ’em, and pointed tips to the toes. How’d they look in a ploughed field or a muddy lane? Or s’pose Peter he went and capered about in these ’ere on a velvet carpet an’ tried to dance. How’d he look?”
The idea of the loutish Peter capering anywhere, least of all on a velvet carpet, made Lilac smile in spite of Uncle Joshua’s great gravity.
“Why, he’d look silly,” he continued; “as silly as a country girl, who’s got to scrub an’ wash an’ make the butter, dressed out in silks an’ fandangoes. She ought to be too proud of being what she is, to try and look like what she isn’t. Give me down that big brown book yonder an’ I’ll read you something fine about that.”
Lilac reached the book from the shelf with the greatest reverence; it was the only one amongst Joshua’s collection that she often begged to look at, because it was full of curious pictures. It was Lavater’s Physiognomy; having found the passage he wanted, Joshua read it very slowly aloud:
“In the mansion of God there are to his glory vessels of wood, of silver, and of gold. All are serviceable, all profitable, all capable of divine uses, all the instruments of God: but the wood continues wood, the silver silver, the gold gold. Though the golden should remain unused, still they are gold. The wooden may be made more serviceable than the golden, but they continue wood. Let each be what he is, so will he be sufficiently good, for man himself, and God. The violin cannot have the sound of the flute, nor the trumpet of the drum.”
He had just finished the last line, and still held one knotty brown finger raised to mark the important words, when there was a low knock at the door, and immediately afterwards it opened a little way and a head appeared, covered by a rusty-black wideawake. It was the second time that day that Lilac had seen it, for it was Peter Greenways’ head. In a moment all the events of the unlucky morning came back to her, and his gruffly unfavourable opinion. Why had he come? This awkward Peter was always turning up when he was not wanted, and thrusting that large uncouth head in at unexpected places. She turned her back towards the door in much vexation, and Peter himself remained stationary, with his eyes fixed where he had first directed them—on his own boot, which still stood on the table by Joshua’s elbow. His first intention had evidently been to come in, but suddenly seized with shyness he was now unable to move.
“Why, Peter, lad,” said the cobbler, “come in then; the boots is ready for you.”
