“But perhaps you do not know what I mean, exactly,” she added.
“No, not exactly,” said Lucy.
“Why, a girl is industrious when she keeps steadily at work all the time, until her work is done. If you had stopped when you had got your basket half full, and had gone to playing with the things, you would not have been industrious.”
“I did, a little,—with my guinea peas,” said Lucy.
“It is best,” said Miss Anne, “when you have anything like that to do, to keep industriously at work until it is finished.”
“But I only wanted to look at my guinea peas a little.”
“O, I don’t think that was very wrong,” said Miss Anne. “Only it would have been a little better if you had put them back upon the shelf, and said, ‘Now, as soon as I have finished my work, then I’ll take out my guinea peas and look at them.’ You would have enjoyed looking at them more when your work was done.”
“You said that I was something else besides industrious.”
“Yes, persevering,” said Miss Anne.
“What is that?”