Jane took her hand and pressed it affectionately. The sunshine seeds were sprouting finely. "Don't you want to come out into the garden with me?" she asked Emily Mead, and Emily rose at once. "I thought auntie would enjoy visiting alone with her old friend," she added, as they passed through the hall.
"What are you, anyway?" Emily asked curiously. "I've heard you were a trained nurse,—are you?"
"I'm one of the brand-new women," said Jane; "not a Suffragette, nor an advanced anything, but just a creature who means to give her life up to teaching happiness as an art."
"Yes, I heard that. But how do you do it?" asked Emily Mead.
"By being happy and thinking happy thoughts and doing happy things."
Emily considered. "But don't you ever have hard things to do?"
"Never. I enjoy them all—I love to work."
Emily looked at her wonderingly. "But washing dishes?—We don't keep a girl, and I hate washing dishes. What would you say to them?"
Jane laughed. "What, those two lovely tin pans and that nice boiling kettle? And all the dirty plates sinking under the soap-suds and then piling up under the clean hot water. And the shining dryness and the putting them on the shelves all in their own piles. And then the knowing that God wanted those dishes washed, and that you've done them just exactly as He'd like to see them done. Why, I think dish-washing is grand!"
Emily opened her eyes widely. "How funny you are! I never heard such talk before! But, then, you've lived in a big city and learned to think in a big way. You wouldn't see dish-washing so if you'd done it all your life and never been told it was nice. You couldn't."