“I think you have plenty of 'soul material,' Jo,” said Lilia, confusedly struggling to make a figure of speech express her meaning. “There's lots of it there, only it wants to be blown up, somehow.”
“Thanks for your encouragement,” said Jo, amid the laughter that followed Lilia's peculiar metaphor. “I think if you'll try to handle the spiritual bellows, you'll find it's harder work than you imagine. Now don't laugh, girls, because I really do feel solemn about it, only I talk in my usual frivolous way.”
“You always make yourself appear wicked, Jo,” said her loving champion, Patty, “but I happen to know a few facts on the opposite side. Who was it who gave every cent of her month's allowance to Mrs. Hart, the poor washerwoman who scorched her white skirt; and who stayed away from the church sociable to take care of that horrid room mate of hers who had a headache?”
“Patty, if you don't desist,” cried Jo, with a flaming face, and brandishing a hair-brush fiercely, “I'll throw this at your dear, charitable little head. Now, Bell, you know we all agreed to tell a story of adventure each night before going to bed, and I think you, as hostess, ought to begin. If the entertainment is delayed much longer it will find me asleep with fatigue and over-feeding in the front row of the orchestra.”
“Dear me, I can't begin!” cried Bell, “Nothing ever happened to me except going to California and having a double wedding in the family. That's the sum total of my adventures.”
“Make up something then, or tell us a true story about California. Oh, you do have such a good time, and funny things are always happening to you,” sighed Lilia. “You never seem to have any trials.”
“Trials!” rejoined Bell, sarcastically. “I should think I hadn't. Perhaps I haven't a little scamp of a brother and an awfully fussy old aunty! Perhaps I'm not such an idiot that I can't multiply eight and nine, or seven and six, without a lead-pencil; perhaps I wasn't left at school while my parents toured in the South! Don't you call those afflictions?”
“Yes, I do,” answered Lilia, joining in the general laugh; “and I'll never allude to your good fortune again. Now tell us a California story,—that's a dear,—for I'm getting sleepy as well as Jo.”
“Oh, well,” said Bell, walking about the room absent-mindedly, until her eyes rested on the cabinet, “I'll tell you the story of these;” and she took up a string of dusty pearls which were seamed and cracked as if by fire. “Now open your eyes and lend me your ears, for I shall make it as 'bookish' and romantic as possible.
“Last summer Mother and I were living in a beautiful valley a hundred miles from San Francisco. It was near the mining districts, where Father was attending to some business. Of course, a great many Mexicans and Indians, as well as Chinamen, worked in these mines, and we used to see them very often. Mother and I were sitting under the peach-trees in the garden one afternoon. It was so beautiful sewing or reading in that California garden, for the fruit was ripe and hanging in bushels on the trees, as lovely to look at as it was luscious to eat; some of the peaches were a rich yellow inside and others snow-white, except where the crimson stones had tinged their sockets with rosy little spots.”