Miss Prillwitz looked at her watch. "I can no longer," she said quickly, and hurried back to her home. We crossed the park thoughtfully and entered the school. There was just time to tell the girls the news before chapel. The knowledge that dear Jim was lying at death's door overwhelmed every other consideration, and yet we talked over Miss Prillwitz's little allegory also.
"We were stupid not to see through it at first," said Adelaide. "She is just the woman to create an ideal world for herself and to live in it. I have no grudge against her because we misunderstood her meaning, and yet there certainly is something very fine in Jim's nature."
"Now I think it all over," said Emma Jane, "she has said nothing which was not true."
"I understand her letter better now," I said. "We have all been parts of a beautiful parable, and we have been as thickheaded as the disciples were when Jesus said, 'O fools, and slow of heart to believe.'"
Milly was silently weeping. "All the beauty of the idea doesn't change the fact that Jim is dying," she said.
"I have never loved any one so since I lost my mother and my baby brother," said Adelaide. "I can't remember how he looked—it was ten years ago, and I have no photographs, only this cameo pin, which father bought because it reminded him of mother. Not the face either, only the turn of the neck. He said she had a beautiful neck—and as he came home from his business at night he always saw her sitting in her little sewing-chair by the window looking every now and then over her shoulder for him with her neck turned so, and her profile clear cut against the dark of the room like the two colors of agate in this cameo."
It is not natural for girls to talk freely on what stirs them most deeply, and little more was said on the subject that morning, but we each thought a great deal, and if our hearts could have been laid bare to each other, we would have been startled by the similarity of the trains of thought which this event had roused. All through the morning's lessons our imaginations wandered to the house across the park, and we wondered whether all was indeed over, and dear, cheery, helpful Jim had gone. We did not remember that we had declared we would gladly let him go to an earthly princedom, and yet this was far better for him. Our imaginations saw only the white upturned face upon the pillow, the grief-stricken mother, and Miss Prillwitz flitting about drawing the sheet straight, and placing white lilacs in his hands.
Adelaide confessed to me, long after, that all of her worldly thoughts in reference to visiting Jim some day came back to her in a strange, sermonizing way. She said that in her secret heart she had rather dreaded the visit because she knew so little of the etiquette of foreign courts, and was afraid she might make some mistake. She had even studied several books on the subject, and knew the sort of costume it was necessary to wear in a royal presentation, just the length of the train, the degree of décolletée, and the veil, and the feathers. The thought came over her with great vividness that she had never studied the etiquette of Heaven or attempted to provide herself with garments fit for the presence of the King. Mrs. Hetterman had a habit of singing quaint old hymns. There was one which we often heard echoing up from the basement—
"At His right hand our eyes behold
The queen arrayed in purest gold;
The world admires her heavenly dress,
Her robe of joy and righteousness."
This scrap was borne in upon Adelaide's mind now. "A robe of joy and righteousness," she thought to herself; "I wonder how it is made! it surely must be becoming."