"Will you let me come and see which you have chosen?" she asked.
"With the greatest pleasure," I answered.
"And will you come and see me? Do you think you could persuade your husband to bring you to dine with me?"
I told her I could promise the one with more than pleasure, and had little doubt of being able to do the other, now that my husband had seen her.
A reference to my husband's dislike to fashionable society followed, and I had occasion to mention his feeling about being asked without me. Of the latter, Lady Bernard expressed the warmest approval; and of the former, said that it would have no force in respect of her parties, for they were not at all fashionable.
This was the commencement of a friendship for which we have much cause to thank God. Nor did we forget that it came through Miss Clare.
I confess I felt glorious over my cousin Judy; but I would bide my time. Now that I am wiser, and I hope a little better, I see that I was rather spiteful; but I thought then I was only jealous for my new and beautiful friend. Perhaps, having wronged her myself, I was the more ready to take vengeance on her wrongs from the hands of another; which was just the opposite feeling to that I ought to have had.
In the mean time, our intimacy with Miss Clare grew. She interested me in many of her schemes for helping the poor; some of which were for providing them with work in hard times, but more for giving them an interest in life itself, without which, she said, no one would begin to inquire into its relations and duties. One of her positive convictions was, that you ought not to give them any thing they ought to provide for themselves, such as food or clothing or shelter. In such circumstances as rendered it impossible for them to do so, the ought was in abeyance. But she heartily approved of making them an occasional present of something they could not be expected to procure for themselves,—flowers, for instance. "You would not imagine," I have heard her say, "how they delight in flowers. All the finer instincts of their being are drawn to the surface at the sight of them. I am sure they prize and enjoy them far more, not merely than most people with gardens and greenhouses do, but far more even than they would if they were deprived of them. A gift of that sort can only do them good. But I would rather give a workman a gold watch than a leg of mutton. By a present you mean a compliment; and none feel more grateful for such an acknowledgment of your human relation to them, than those who look up to you as their superior."
Once, when she was talking thus, I ventured to object, for the sake of hearing her further.
"But," I said, "sometimes the most precious thing you can give a man is just that compassion which you seem to think destroys the value of a gift."