“Why,” she said, hesitatingly, “I don’t know. I never thought there was anything strange about it. Why shouldn’t those things be talked of as well as any others? You discovered whether the young lady was fond of music and painting. I can’t see why it wouldn’t have been just as easy to have found out about her interests in more important matters.”
“But how would you have done it? Just suppose yourself to have been in Judge Erskine’s parlor, surrounded by all those people who were there last evening, how would you have introduced the subject which is of the most importance?”
“Why,” said Flossy, looking puzzled, “how do I know? How can I tell unless I had been there and talked it over? You might as well ask me how I should have introduced the question whether—well, for instance, whether they knew Mr. Roberts, supposing they had come from the same city, and I had reason to think it possible—perhaps probable—that they were his friends. It seems to me I should have referred to it very naturally, and that I should have been apt to do it early in our conversation. Now, you know it is quite possible—if not probable—that they are intimate friends of the Lord Jesus. Why couldn’t I have asked them about him?”
Marion and Eurie looked at each other in a sort of puzzled amusement, then Marion said:
“Still I am not sure that you have answered my question about how to begin on such a subject. You know you could have said, ‘Did you meet Mr. Roberts in Boston?’ supposing them to have been in Boston. But you could hardly say, ‘Did you meet the Lord Jesus there?’ I am not sure but that sounds irreverent to you. I don’t mean it to be; I really want to understand how those subjects present themselves to your mind.”
“I don’t believe I can tell you,” Flossy said, simply. “They have no special way of presenting themselves. It is all so new to me that I suppose I haven’t gotten used to it yet. I am always thinking about it, and wondering whether any new people can tell me anything new. Now I am interested in what you told me about that Susan, and I feel as though I should like to ask her whether there were any very earnest Christians where she used to live and whether they had any new ways of reading the Bible, and whether the young ladies had a prayer-meeting, and all those things, you know.”
Again Marion and Eurie exchanged glances. This didn’t sound abrupt, or out of place, or in any sense offensive to ideas of propriety. Yet who talked in that way among their acquaintances? And how had Flossy gotten ahead of them in all these things? It was a standing subject of wonderment among those girls how Flossy had outstripped them.
They were silent for a few minutes. Then Eurie suddenly changed the current of thought: “How strange that these changes should have come to Ruth and we know nothing about it until a mother and sister were actually domiciled! We are all so intimate, too. It seems that there are matters about which we have not learned to talk together.”
“Ruth was always more reserved than the rest of us,” Flossy said. “I am not so surprised at not knowing about her affairs; we are more communicative, I think. At least I have told you all about the changes that are to come to me, and I think you would tell me if you had anything startling, wouldn’t you?”
Marion rose up and went over to Flossy, and, bending, kissed her fair cheek.