“You know you can almost touch heaven when you’re so happy, and when you’re unhappy it seems too far away to be real. Yet some one is always happy, and some one else unhappy. If we could remember that, do you suppose heaven would always seem near?” Jane asked.
“I don’t know; I suppose so, Janie. I’ve never been really unhappy, never more than sad, or sorry when our pets die—though that’s bad enough! We never had anything to bear that we ought to call sorrow. I’m always happy,” said Mary.
“I know you are!” cried Jane. “I’m not. It doesn’t need sorrow to make me sorrowful. Sometimes I get up in the morning feeling as if I couldn’t stand it; nothing special—just stand it! I get as blue! Then sometimes I could dance on the top of the river, I’m so light-hearted! This morning it doesn’t seem as though the blue day could come. This is different; I know what I’m glad about now. It feels all warm and lasting.”
“I suppose—perhaps—we ought not to be unhappy over nothing,” said Mary.
“It’s my hair,” said Jane. “Everything is my hair! Mrs. Moulton says ups and downs are part of ‘the red-haired temperament.’ Your temperament has brown hair, Molly darling, so you’ll have to dye me, if you want to make me nice and steady-good.”
“I don’t want to make you anything that changes you, my Janie,” said Mary. “And I didn’t mean to preach.”
“Preach all you want to, Sister Maria Serena; I don’t mind preaching when people practise, too,” said Jane, pirouetting on the extreme tips of her toes. “I came out to see if I could find the prettiest rose that ever bloomed for mother’s plate at breakfast. I don’t like any of them exactly. Do you think she ought to have a red, or a pink, or a white one, Mary?”
“Pink,” said Mary instantly. “A long bud, just opening. One of us ought to offer to help her dress; she’s used to a maid. Perhaps it would better be you, Jane. You are cleverer with your fingers than I am.”
“I think I’d be afraid,” said Jane, nervously, actually turning a little pale from the thought of not performing her task satisfactorily. “But I’d love to.”
“Perhaps she wants to get up now, and is afraid of disturbing us,” suggested Mary. “Shall we creep up to see if she is awake?”