The flow of words quite paralysed Miss Lavinia; she had no answer to give.
Mr. Toms again cleared his throat. “It’s in this way, Miss Lavinia,” he continued, “time is given us to be used. An all-merciful Providence has put us here to do the best we can, and we must make the most of our talents. They mustn’t be wrapped up in a napkin and hid.”
By this time Mr. Toms’s thumbs were in his arm-holes and he was in his best platform vein.
“There’s them as doesn’t heed, but I say ‘waste not, want not,’ whether it be bread, or money, or time. Let not the talents be abused! And when my boys come home and talk about primroses and such, well then I feel annoyed and rightly so.”
Again he cleared his throat, but was arrested in the further expression of his views by the tears that filled Miss Lavinia’s faded blue eyes.
In spite of pompous manners and in spite of push, Mr. Toms was a kindly man at heart, and a little old maid’s tears made him feel ashamed. “Oh, I say, Miss Lavinia ...,” he stammered, “oh, I say ...!”
“I am very foolish,” she answered him. “I think I am a little tired. But about the flowers! I read that it was being done in quite big schools. I myself know very little about them but I thought that I, too, would like to try.” Then her delicate cheeks flushed as she went on speaking. “I thought, too, that as God himself has made all these wonders, it could not possibly be waste of time for us to stop now and again and look at the beauty that he gives. But ... I do not know. Perhaps I am wrong....”
Again Mr. Toms cleared his throat. “Upon my word, Miss Lavinia,” he interrupted; “upon my word, I believe that it’s me. Anyhow, go on, go on; I’ll say no more! It can’t do no harm anyhow, and who knows but it may be good.”
When the following week Miss Lavinia took her school to walk, two by two, through the woods of the West River, Mr. Toms was glad that the afternoon was fine. In the evening, when his boys showed him little twigs of oak already bearing the future acorns, he was so much interested that he took old Mr. Toms’s magnifying glass, until now used in reading the Bible only, and through it saw the flowers on a larger scale.