This time I was sure it was you. And, O Maggie, I ran to the door eager for the touch of your hand and the look in your eyes. I was afraid to be alone with my own thoughts. I was afraid of the conclusion to which they were leading me. Maggie, if ever a girl needed comfort and encouragement and heartening, I did then.
And I got it, dear.
For there was a man at the door, with a great basket of azaleas—pale, pink earth-stars they are, the sweet, innocent things—and a letter for me. Here it is. Let me read it to you.
"My dear Miss Omar:
Once on a time there was a Luckless Pot, marred in the making, that had the luck to be of service to a Pipkin.
It was a saucy Pipkin, though a very winning one, and it had all the health and strength the poor Pot lacked—physically. Morally—morally, that young Pipkin was in a most unwholesome condition. Already its fair, smooth surface was scratched and fouled. It was unmindful of the treasure of good it contained, and its responsibility to keep that good intact. And it seemed destined to crash itself to pieces among pots of baser metal.
What the Luckless Pot did was little—being ignorant of the art by which diamonds may be attained easily and honestly—but it gave the little Pipkin a chance.
What the Pipkin did with that chance the Pot learned to-night, with such pleasure and satisfaction as made it impossible for him not to share it with her. So while he sent Burnett out to the conservatory to cut azaleas, he wrote her a note to try to convey to her what he felt when, in that nicely polished, neatly decorated and self-respecting Vessel on exhibition in Mrs. Gates' red room, he recognized the poor little Pipkin of other days.
The Pot, as you know, was a sort of stranded bit of clay that had never filled the use for which pots are created. He had little human to interest him. The fate of the Pipkin, therefore, he had often pondered on; and, in spite of improbabilities, had had faith in a certain quality of brave sincerity the little thing showed; a quality that shone through acquired faults like a star in a murky sky.
This justification of his faith in the Pipkin may seem a small matter to make so much of. And yet the Pot—that sleeps not well o' nights, as is the case with damaged pots—will take to bed with him to-night a pretty, pleasant thought due just to this.