Then with a good-night kiss she was gone—gone, as Julia knew, to be more than ever lonely for her own little girl.
For a long time Julia stood looking at the dress, and the slippers, and the stockings. Mrs. King had plenty 104 of money, yet these were to have been her daughter’s graduation clothes. And she had not finished school because she could not have clothes like the rest of the girls who were to have expensive ones. Mrs. King was honored all through the city, yet she was dressed in a simple serge dress at the Country Club. It was all very strange! Some one had things very much mixed up concerning what a girl should wear. How long it seemed since she had left the office in the afternoon!
The room was so dainty that it took Julia a long time to get ready for bed. How she would love to have a room like this! Maybe it would be easy to be good. She looked at the dress again, as she laid it carefully over the chair. It was all hers. The girls would laugh at her but she loved it. Then she lifted the little string of pearls—not cheap, big ones such as she had worn on Sunday, but dainty, beautiful ones, and they whispered again to her,
“Be as beautiful as the beads, girlie. True beauty is never put on from the outside. It comes from inside because of what you are.”
Long she stood in the moonlight near the window looking at them. Then she dropped on her knees and said,
“Dear God, she has shown me the best. Help me not to be a coward as I go out and try to do it. Help me to be as beautiful as the pearls. I thank Thee for to-day. I want to show others what real beauty is and how to get it. Please help me.”
And the Father heard the prayer of the girl kneeling there in her white night-gown, for it came from a sincere heart—and He answered. 105