The Jabberwocks sprung upon her tooth and nail. "Don't be coarse!" "Yes, Em, it's really too bad of you!—you're always spoiling things with your sarcasm." "Do go on, Miss Darcy!—It's so romantic."
One little placid-faced girl, stitching on a baby-dress, said quietly, "We ought to be nicer to Jews than we are, I think, girls. They're really wonderful!—so clever, you know."
"Yes," agreed Joan, "they are rather wonderful. There seems to be an intellectual force about them, a curious inner fire, that nothing can dampen, not even sweat-shops—I sometimes wish I were a Jew myself."
They stared at her in utter astonishment. "Wish you were a Jew? Why, Miss Darcy! Haven't you any prejudice against them at all?"
"Prejudice—against a race of several billion people?" Joan was astonished in her turn. A singularly tolerant mother, and later, life in a little conventual world which had its own standards and viewpoints, had sheltered her from much of the contagion of current opinion. "That would be a large order!" she smiled. "No, I can't seem to do my prejudicing in wholesale lots. But of course I have seen Jews one could cheerfully do without—the oily sort. And Christians too—haven't you?" She dismissed the subject with a shrug. "Since you're so interested in Stefan Nikolai, I wonder if you'd like to hear a letter from him. There's one in my muff that the postman brought just as I started."
The Jabberwocks were enchanted.
"You won't mind if it's quite personal? They sometimes are."
"So much the better!..."
It seemed to be distinctly personal, as Joan realized after she had got well into it. Mr. Nikolai wrote to thank her for the little picture of the furs and the ringless hand.
The fox who rendered up his life to furnish forth a tippet would cry, "O death, where is thy sting?" if he could see himself now!—By the way, what color have your eyes become? Do they still match my aquamarine, or must it be gray sapphires the next time?