“One that will influence my whole life because it has made me glad I’m not good like I tried to be. I love the feeling of having gotten rid of goodness, Roberta”; and Ellen flashed me the smile of a naughty angel, and turned from me to wipe the nose of the youngest Sylvester baby, Prudentia, who accompanied us on our woodsy rambles. “Can you always decide everything in your life?”
“Indeed I cannot,” I answered quickly. “I must give up a thing that’s sweetest and dearest in life to me, and I can’t decide to do it—I am not strong.”
“Oh, Roberta!” Ellen cried out. “You are so much stronger than I, for I decided and did the opposite thing.”
“What did you want to do?”
“The thing I did do,” poor Ellen cried, tears welling up to her sweet eyes. “I wanted to do what I wanted to do, and yet before I so wanted to do what was right.” Then, with her little fists pounding on the moss on which we were sitting, she said: “And mighty often, Roberta Hathaway, what people want to do seems to me the really right thing to do.”
As I grow older, it seems to me so very often that what people want is really the right thing. There are so many needless sacrifices made in life,—sacrifices that do good to no one and cripple and maim one.
I might have saved myself the worry of giving up the “sweetest and dearest thing in life,” for I had an experience which showed me what a solemn young fool I was.
If Ellen and I had this intense spiritual modesty, Janie Acres was not so afflicted. She was always prolific in detail of any sentimental adventure which she had, and was generally only quiet when she had nothing to tell. Ellen summed this characteristic up in her observation on Janie’s character:—
“When Roberta and I don’t say anything it is because we have too much to say, but when Janie acts as if she knew how God made the world, it is a sure sign she has nothing to tell.”
Poor Janie Acres! Through all this long stretch of years I can see her perpetually heart-hungry, wishing for experiences her very eagerness denied her; longing for sympathy, companionship, and love, and when such things came her way, killing them. She had a curious jealousy which was kept from its full bloom by her confidence in herself. When Janie hadn’t sufficient sentimental experiences she would invent them. And it was because of her inventions that my little experience which I was taking so seriously was turned to ashes before me.