"Thank you, Nancy. Now listen to the words of a wise woman, Mary Lamb. What do you know about Mary Lamb, Frances? Yes, she wrote many of the 'Tales from Shakespeare,' and she lived with her brother Charles and was his greatest friend, and the friend of his friends. She is writing to a friend of hers who has been confessing to actions which Mary might just as easily have condemned as you condemned Jessica's. But this is what she writes:
You will smile when I tell you I think myself the only woman in the world who could live with a brother's wife and make a real friend of her—partly from a knack I know I have of looking into people's real characters and never expecting them to act out of it. Never expecting another to do as I would in the same case. I do not expect you or want you to be otherwise than you are. I love you for the good that is in you.
"There's wisdom," concluded Miss Marlowe, "and next time you find yourselves saying, 'I wouldn't have been so mean or horrid or selfish,' just ask yourself, how do you know you wouldn't, and what has that got to do with it, and what do you know about it, anyway? Are you showing sympathetic insight or merely conceit? You'll meet plenty of Jessicas who are easier to condemn than to understand. Don't lose your friends by a lack of loving understanding. Be grateful for them; they are your most precious possessions. Love them for the best that is in them.
"There, that's a longer sermon than usual. Take your pens now and write that sentence from Mary Lamb's letter at the bottom of your essay, and after I have dictated it make your corrections and jot down the new things about Jessica that you haven't noted before."
Five A heaved a sigh of relief. Miss Marlowe was through with them once more. There was the usual clattering of inkwells and requests for new pens, and then Miss Marlowe went to her desk, and according to custom one by one the class brought up their books to receive her suggestions and criticisms.
Judith wrote her corrections mechanically and slowly, but her mind was working swiftly. That's what she had been doing, judging Nancy, saying, 'I wouldn't have done it'; criticizing, not trying to understand, and she had judged herself, condemned herself to do without Nancy and the precious possession of Nancy's friendship. Darling Nancy! She might have been loving her all this time for the good in her, her sweetness, her unfailing kindness, her absolute squareness, her dearness.
Judith's eyes were shining as she carried up her book to Miss Marlowe, and the fervency with which she said, "Thank you," when Miss Marlowe had finished her criticism, brought a happy smile to Miss Marlowe's own eyes.
"That child's got the idea," she said to herself; "Well, if one seed falls into good ground it's worth while—splendidly worth while."
The recess bell rang and Five A lost no time filing out to the corridor and thence to tuck shop and gymnasium, but Judith was delayed by her duties as monitress and Nancy was not to be seen when she reached the corridor. Down to the tuck shop sped Judith.
"Seen Nancy?" she asked Jane who was rapidly consuming two large buns and an ice-cream cone.