"No, no, no!" Pearl cried, throwing her arms around Martha's thin shoulders, and holding her tight in her strong young arms. "You're only twenty-five, and that's not old; and your looks are all right if you would only do your hair out bigger and fluffier, and you'd get to be a better figure if you'd breathe deep, and throw back your shoulders, and sleep with your windows open. I read all about it, and I'll get it for you. It was in a paper Camilla gets—a long piece called 'How to Be Pretty, though Plain.' I am doin' the things, too, and we'll do them together, Martha. See here, Martha, here's the way to breathe, and here's the way to throw back your shoulders"—suiting the action to the word—"and a cold bath every morning will give you rosy cheeks."
She kissed Martha impulsively. "Oh, you bet you'll get married,
Martha, and I'll be your bridesmaid—me and Bud will be it—and Lib
Cavers will be maid of honour and carry a shock of lilacs, and I'll
write a piece about it for the paper."
Martha smiled bravely, and Pearl was too polite to notice that her eyes were suspiciously dewy.
"Oh, no, Pearl," she said, as she put away all the things carefully, "I guess I'll never be married; but I love to make these things, and when I'm sewing at them I often imagine things, foolish things that'll never be; but I have them all ready, anyway"—she was closing down her trunk lid—"I have them ready, anyway—in case—well, just in case——".
CHAPTER XV
THE SOWING
"And other fell on good ground."
"EVERYTHING else is pretty only the old school," said Mary Watson. "Look at the sky and the grass and the spruce trees on the sandhills—all nice colours only the old school, and it's just a grindy-gray-russet inside and out."
Mary was a plain-spoken young lady of ten.
"Well, we can clean it, anyway," Pearl said hopefully. "If we get it clean it won't look so bad, even if it ain't pretty; and we can get lots of violets, though they don't show much; but we'll know they're there; and we can get cherry-blossoms and put them in something big on the desk for the minister to look over, and they'll do him good, for he'll see that somebody thought about it."