“I think the pleasure of giving it will be a delightful reward for a little self-command.”
“Only Hal and the girls will make such a work about it. I’m glad, after all, that Bessie has nothing to do with it, or she would want to dress it up in flowers and ribbons. Ha-ha! But what a little crab it is!”
“Don’t be too sure of that. People may have other designs.”
“Bessie’s can’t be anything but trumpery.”
“Sometimes present trumpery is a step to something better. ‘A was an Archer’ is not very wise, but it is the road to reading—and even if it were not so, Sam, it is not right to shame people into giving; for what is not bestowed for the true reasons, does no good to giver nor to receiver.”
Sam looked up with a frown of attention, as if he were trying to take in the new light; but he did take it in, and smacking his hands together with a noise like a pistol-shot, said, “Ay, that’s it! We don’t want what is grudged.”
Miss Fosbrook thought of words that would another time be more familiar to Sam. “Not grudgingly, nor of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver.”
What she said was, “You see, if you plague Bessie too much, to make her like ourselves, when she is really so different, you are driving her to the shamming you despise so much.”
“But ought not she to be cured of being silly?”
“When we have quite made up our minds upon what silliness is. There, the bell has stopped.”