“How about playing the violin?” suggested Alice.
“I can’t do that,” said Frieda suddenly. “I cannot do one thing. O, there comes Dr. Helen, after all! We were wishing you were here,” and Frieda sprang up and ran to meet the doctor. The others followed her and in an instant Dr. Helen found her arms full of welcoming girls.
259“I met a messenger on the way, telling me that I need not come, and I’ll admit it was a relief. I knew you’d get on all right, but I did want a finger in the pie. There! You may put my hat and coat away, Hannah, if you will, and I’ll get right to work. How prettily you are putting that smilax on, Frieda!”
“That’s right to cheer Frieda up, Mother,” said Catherine. “She was just saying that she couldn’t do anything.”
“Frieda was saying that? I thought you embroidered that wonderful apron yourself?”
“O, of course, but that is only Handarbeit,” said Frieda.
“Hand work is highly valued these days,” remarked the doctor. “If you could teach Catherine to sew so well, Frieda, I should be even prouder of her than I am now. But it must not distress you when you find that there is some one thing you can’t do. No one does everything well. It’s one of my pet theories that for every talent one has, there is some other he hasn’t. It’s part of the balancing of the world. Think how very disagreeable it would be if there were one person who could do everything, and some one else who could do nothing at all.”
“Don’t you think there are some people who can’t do anything?” asked Alice.
“Not really. Some people never seem to find 260 their special line. I’ve known people so perverse they wouldn’t do what they could, simply because they would have preferred something else. But I’m a firm believer that every one has a gift.”
“Is Handarbeit a gift?” asked Frieda, looking with respect at the graceful vine twining over the shoulder of her blue apron.