Pamela was perhaps carrying out her ideals more thoroughly than Julia, for all her teaching was along the artistic lines that she loved the best. She was not always sure that the girls got just what she intended them to get from her little talks on the nature of beauty, and the relations of beauty to utility. She used the simplest language, however, and made her illustrations of a kind that they could easily comprehend. She had tried to show them the meaning of "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful," and in expounding this she saw that she must try to train them to understand the truly beautiful. For her own room she had had some mottoes done in pen and ink artistically lettered, and one at a time she would set them in a conspicuous place, sure to attract the attention of the girls at their lessons.
Ruskin's "Every right action and true thought sets the seal of its beauty on person and face; every wrong action and foul thought, its seal of distortion," put up in plain sight, though at first it was not thoroughly understood, served as the text for a little talk, and each girl for the time being decided to curb her tongue, lest her face should show the effect of backbiting.
Samples of dress fabrics, samples of wall papers, gaudy chromos contrasted with simple photographs, queer and over-decorated vases in comparison with graceful Greek shapes, were all used by Pamela to enforce her lessons. Yet she often had misgivings that her words were not accepted as actual gospel by Nellie and Haleema and one or two others, whose preference for crude colors and fantastic decorations often came unexpectedly to the surface.
Nora laughed at her efforts to develop an æsthetic sense in these girls.
"They'll never have the chance to own the really beautiful things, and they might as well think that these cheap and gaudy objects are beautiful."
But Pamela shook her head at this.
"Why, Nora, you surprise me! What I am trying to teach is the fact that beautiful things are often as cheap as ugly things. Of course, in one sense, they are always cheaper, because they give more pleasure and often last longer. But when a girl's taste is cultivated she can often find more attractive things for less money. Who wouldn't rather have a wicker chair than one of those hideous red and green plush upholstered affairs, and the wicker chair certainly costs less."
"You are absolutely correct, Pamela Northcote, and your sentiments do not savor of anarchism, though I hear that Mrs. Blair is greatly perturbed lest this work at the Mansion should interfere with the labor market, and prevent the householder of the future from getting her rightful quota of domestics."
"It would not surprise me," said Pamela, "if not more than two of the girls here actually became domestics. I think that Julia and Miss South are right in encouraging them to live up to their highest aspirations."
"Well, I doubt if any of them have begun to aspire very strongly yet. On the whole they are remarkably short-sighted, and when I ask them what they intend to be they are usually so taken by surprise that they can make no reply."