Clare Avery and Eunice Underhill struck up a warm friendship. Eunice (name and dates true, character imaginary) was one of the few women who keep “the dew of their youth,” and in freshness, innocence, and ignorance of this evil world, she was younger than many girls not half her age. Her simplicity put Clare at ease, while her experience of life awoke respect. Clare seized her opportunity one day, while taking a long walk with Eunice, to obtain the opinion of the latter on the point which still interested her, and compare it with that of Mrs Tremayne. Why it was easier to talk to Eunice than to those at home, Clare could not decide. Perhaps, had she discovered the reason, she might not have found it very flattering to her self-love.
“Mistress Eunice, think you it easy to be content with small gear?”
“You would say with lack of goods?” asked Eunice.
“Nay; but with the having to deal with petty, passing matter, in the stead of some noble deed that should be worthy the doing.”
“I take you now, Mistress Clare. And I can feel for your perplexity, seeing I have known the same myself.”
“Oh, you have so?” responded Clare eagerly.
“Ay, I have felt as though the work set me to do were sheer waste of such power and knowledge as God had given unto me; and have marvelled (I would speak it with reverence) what the Lord would be at, that He thus dealt with me. Petty things—mean things—little passing matter, as you said, that none shall be the better for to-morrow; wherefore must I do these? I have made a pudding, maybe; I have shaken up a bed; I have cut an old gown into a kirtle. And to-morrow the pudding shall be eaten, and the bed shall lack fresh straw, and ere long the gown shall be worn to rags. But I shall live for ever. Wherefore should a soul be set to such work which shall live for ever?”
“Ay,—you know!” said Clare, drawing a deep breath of satisfaction. “Now tell me, Mistress Eunice, what answer find you to this question? Shall it be with you, as with other, that these be my tasks at school?”
“That is verily sooth, Mistress Clare; yet there is another light wherein I love the better to look thereat. And it is this: that in this world be no little things.”
“What would you say, Mistress Eunice? In good sooth, it seemeth me the rather, there be few great.”