‘He did say life was full of little things that were waiting to be done, but it’s so easy to talk like that,’ complained Jean Murray. ‘Why didn’t he say what things?’
‘Well, you see, we’ve got to discover what they are,’ persisted Mary. When she did manage to produce an idea, she was always very slow to part with it.
‘You said that before,’ retorted Jean, impolitely; ‘and it doesn’t help anybody at all. You can’t go round asking people, can you? They’d call you a nuisance.’
Barbara sighed, and laid down the blackened piece of flannel she had been toiling at since the beginning of term. Between the address of the Canon and the shapelessness of her flannel petticoat, life was very difficult to understand just then.
‘Besides,’ she chimed in, when Jean finished speaking, ‘if everybody is doing something for everybody else, there’s nobody left to do anything for!’
‘Finny always says we are to do things for ourselves as much as we can, and that the way to help other people most is to see that they don’t have to bother about us. That’s not a bit the same thing as going round and finding out what people want done for them,’ continued Charlotte, eloquently.
‘They can’t both be right,’ declared Angela, shrilly. ‘If the Canon says one thing and Finny says another, what are we to believe, and what is the truth of it all, I should like to know? The truth–that’s what I want!’
‘Yes, you do,’ remarked Babs, beginning to chuckle. ‘You want it awfully badly, most of the time.’
‘You mind your own business, Barbara Berkeley, and I’ll mind mine,’ advised Angela, threateningly.
‘But that’s just what we haven’t got to do,’ retorted Babs, with another laugh. ‘I’ve got to forget my own business and look after somebody else’s, and so have you. The Canon said so.’