The colour came into Polly’s cheeks, but before she could answer, Mrs. Winship walked in, stocking-basket in hand, and seated herself in the little wicker rocking-chair. Polly’s clarion tones had given her a clue to the subject, and she thought the discussion needed guidance.
“You were talking about Mrs. Pinkerton, girls,” she said, serenely. “You say you are fond of her, Laura, dear, and it seems very ungracious for me to criticise your friend; that is a thing which most of us fail to bear patiently. But I cannot let you hold her up as an ideal to be worshipped, or ask the girls to admire as a piece of self-denial what I fear was nothing but indolence and self-gratification. You are too young to talk of these things very much; but you are not too young to make up your mind that when you agree to live all your life long with a person, you must have some other feeling than a determination not to teach school. Jessie Denton’s mother, my dear Laura, would never have asked the sacrifice of her daughter’s whole life; and Jessie herself would never have made it had she been less vain, proud, and luxurious in her tastes, and a little braver, more self-forgetting and industrious. These are hard words, dear, and I am sorry to use them. She has gained the riches she wanted,—the carriages and servants, and tea-gowns, and hammered silver from Tiffany’s, but she looks tired and disappointed, as Bell says; and I’ve no doubt she is, poor girl.”
“I don’t think you do her justice, Mrs. Winship; I don’t, indeed,” said Laura.
“If you are really attached to her, Laura, don’t make the mistake of admiring her faults of character, but try to find her better qualities, and help her to develop them. It is a fatal thing when girls of your age set up these false standards, and order their lives by them. There are worse things than school-teaching, yes, or even floor-scrubbing or window-washing. Lovely tea-gowns and silver-backed brushes are all very pretty and nice to have, if they are not gained at the sacrifice of something better. I should have said to my daughter, had I been Mrs. Denton, ‘We will work for each other, my darling, and try to do whatever God gives us to do; but, no matter how hard life is, your heart is the most precious thing in the world, and you must never sell that, if we part with everything else.’ Oh, my girls, my girls, if I could only make you believe that ‘poor and content is rich, and rich enough.’ I cannot bear to think of your growing year by year into the conviction that these pretty glittering things of wealth are the true gold of life which everybody seeks. Forgive me, Laura, if I have hurt your feelings.”
“I know you would never hurt anybody’s feelings, if you could help it, Mrs. Winship,” Laura answered, with a hint of coldness in her voice, “though I can’t help thinking that you are a little hard on poor Jessie; but, even then, one can surely like a person without wishing to do the very same things she does.”
“Yes, that is true,” said Mrs. Winship, gravely. “But one cannot constantly justify a wrong action in another without having one’s own standard unconsciously lowered. What we continually excuse in other people we should be inclined by and by to excuse in ourselves. Let us choose our friends as wisely as possible, and love them dearly, helping them to grow worthier of our love at the same time we are trying to grow worthier of theirs; because ‘we live by admiration, hope, and love,’ you know, but not by admiring and loving the wrong things.
“But there is the horn, and I hear the boys. Let us come to luncheon, and tell our good news of Elsie.”
Long before the boys appeared in sight, their voices rang through the cañon in a chorus that woke the echoes, and presently they came into view, bearing two quarters and a saddle of freshly killed mutton, hanging from a leafy branch swung between Jack’s sturdy shoulder and Geoff’s.
“A splendid ‘still hunt’ this morning, Aunt Truth!” exclaimed Jack. “Game plenty and not too shy, dogs in prime condition, hunters ditto. Behold the result!”