“Everything counts. If you can’t be patient and do a simple thing like a grass mat how do you expect to be promoted? It is the promotion that gains us honours but if one fails to do the best he can with anything given to do, how can one hope to go higher in the scale of progress?
“In Woodcraft, it is not the grass mat we weave that counts for the coup or honour, it is the general improvement in one’s moral and spiritual life that really counts. And the uplift in mental and characteristic desires brings about the higher basis for the next step.
“You mistake, Eleanor, when you think you are weaving grass mats or willow beds—you are weaving qualities of thought, good or bad, and each pattern produced only shows what thoughts, upbuilding or destructive, you are allowing yourself to weave into the warp and woof of your future life. And this pattern is all there is to our temporal lives, but it is everything when we seek promotion to our eternal and spiritual life!”
Eleanor lifted her delicate eyebrows with a disdainful manner and pretended to stifle a yawn as she gazed away to Pine Nob.
The Guide saw the expression of being bored but she said nothing, being too noble a character to take offence or feel sensitive over the girl’s rudeness. The other girls had heard the short lecture and pondered deeply as they worked.
Miss Miller saw the thoughtful girls in one comprehensive glance, and thanked the Great Spirit that the seed had not all fallen on barren ground.
Eleanor noticed the silence after a time and remarked:
“Have you girls lost your tongues?”
“Why-hy, no-o! I guess we were thinking.”
“Thinking—what of?” wondered she.