"Look," called Rose, from the window. "It's going to clear. Oh, see that wonderful rainbow. I don't believe I ever saw one in the morning before."
"'Rainbow at morning, sailors take warning,'" quoted Dorothy.
"I don't believe in that, or any other unpleasant 'stupidstition'—as my reverend used to call them," Rose retorted, as she hastily began to dress, for the last time, in the blue striped costume which had been hers for nearly three years, but was, in a few hours, to change to one pure white, like a sombre chrysalis to a radiant butterfly. "No matter when a rainbow appears it is always an omen of fair promise. It's Mother Nature smiling through her tears."
She caught, in the mirror, a reflection of her friend's affectionate glance; her own cheek began to dimple and her lips to curve as she said, "I can tell by your expression just what you're going to say, and...."
"Egoist," mocked the other. "I hadn't the slightest idea of comparing your own smile to a rainbow, so now."
"I can't help it, really." Rose spoke with unfeigned distress in her voice, and began angrily to massage the corners of her mouth downward. "There's something wrong with the muscles of my face, I think, and sometimes I get worried for fear people will think that it's affectation. I get frightfully tired of seeing a perpetually forced grin on other faces—it reminds me of Mr. William Shakespeare's remark that 'a man may smile and be a villain still.'"
"Not with your kind, dear. 'There's a painted smile on the lip that lies, when the villain plays his part; and the smile in the depths of the honest eyes—and this is the smile of the heart.'"
"Or of the cheerful idiot," supplemented Rose. "Do you really think that I'm ... shallow? Sometimes it seems to me that the truly wise, thoughtful people, who search the deeps of life and are themselves strongly stirred, are always serious looking."
"Pooh. It's generally pose, and a much easier one to get away with. I always discount it about ninety-nine per cent."
"But, at least, others must think that I am always happy, and I'm not—sometimes I wish that I might be; but not often, for one would have to be utterly selfish and unsympathetic in order to be so, when there is so much suffering everywhere."