"I wish it would help every one else. Everything is helping me now; if
I were writing to you I could tell you some of them."
"I like to hear you talk, Marjorie."
"Do you?" she asked wonderingly. "Linnet does, too, and Mrs. Kemlo. As I shall never write a book, I must learn to talk, and talk myself all out. Aunt Prue is living her book."
"Tell me something that has helped you," he urged.
She looked at the goldenrod in her hand, and raised it to her lips.
"It is coming to me that Christ made everything. He made those lilies of which he said, 'Consider the lilies.' Isn't it queer that we will not let him clothe us as he did the lilies? What girl ever had a white dress of the texture and whiteness and richness of the lily?"
"But the lily has but one dress; girls like a new dress for every occasion and a different one."
"'Shall he not much more clothe you?' But we do not let him clothe us. When one lily fades, he makes another in a fresh dress. I wish I could live as he wants me to. Not think about dress or what we eat or drink? Only do his beautiful work, and not have to worry and be anxious about things."
"Do you have to be?" he asked smiling.
"My life is a part of lives that are anxious about these things. But I don't think about dress as some girls do. I never like to talk about it. It is not a temptation to me. It would not trouble me to wear one dress all my life—one color, as the flowers do; it should be a soft gray—a cashmere, and when one was soiled or worn out I would have another like it—and never spend any more thought about it. Aunt Prue loves gray—she almost does that—she spends no thought on dress. If we didn't have to 'take thought,' how much time we would have—and how our minds would be at rest—to work for people and to study God's works and will."