“I know who is fond of Hunt the Slipper,” said she. “A pretty figure an orange samite gown would cut after an evening of it! I think, too, I would rather be free to go about on my feet than even to wear lovely blue slippers. Nay, Antigone, you may depend upon it, there are less pleasant things in Lady Margaret’s life than orange gowns and blue slippers. We can have a say about our weddings, remember: but she will be handed over to somebody she never saw, as like as not. I’d rather be as I am. Mother says folks’ lots are more even than they like to think. Poor folks fancy that rich ones have nothing to trouble them worth mention; and a sick man thinks, if he were only well, he would not mind being poor; and a man in prison says that if he could but be free, he could bear both illness and poverty. The truth is, everybody thinks his own trouble the worst; and yet, if we had our neighbours’ instead, nine times out of ten we should be glad to get back to our own. We know the worst of them, and often we don’t of the others. So that is why I say, I’d rather be as I am.”
“But people look down on you!” said Antigone.
“Well, let them. That won’t hurt me,” answered Sarah.
“Sarah, I do believe you’ve not a bit of spirit!”
“I’d rather keep my spirit for what it is good for—to help me over hard places and along weary bits of road. All women have those at times. Mother says—”
“Where’s the good of quoting old women? They have outlived their youth.”
“Well, at any rate they lived through it, and some of them picked up a bit of wisdom by the way.”
“You may keep your musty wisdom to yourself! I want none of it!” said Antigone, scornfully.
“I want all I can get,” quietly responded Sarah. “Mother says (if you don’t care for it, Emma may) that discontent is the worst companion a girl can have for making everything look miserable. You’ll be a deal happier, she says, with a dry crust and a good will to it, than with a roast ox and a complaining temper.”
“Ay, that’s true!” said Emma, with a sigh.