“Oh, of course, there is a moral beauty which we find in the faces of the most ordinary, but I was speaking of physical beauty.”
“So was I,” said Flossy, with an emphatic nod of her pretty little head. “I didn’t mean anything deep and wise, at all. I don’t know anything about what they call ‘esthetics,’ or any of those scientific phrases. I mean just pretty things. Now, to show you how simple my thought was, that ivy leaf made me think of a pretty dress, well made and shapely, you know, and fitted to the face and form of the wearer. I thought the One who made such lovely plants, and finished them so exquisitely, must be pleased to see us study enough of His works to make ourselves look pleasing to the eyes of others.”
Susan Erskine turned quite away from the plants and stared at her guest with wide, open, amazed eyes, for a full minute. “Don’t you think,” she asked at last, and her tone was of that stamp which indicates suppressed force—“don’t you think that a great deal of time, and a great deal of money, and a great deal of force, which might do wonders elsewhere, are wasted on dress?”
“Yes,” said Flossy, simply and sweetly, “I know that is so. After I was converted, for a little while it troubled me very much. I had been in the habit of spending a great deal of time and not a little money in that way, and I knew it must be wrong, and I was greatly in danger of going to the other extreme. I think for a few days I made myself positively ugly to my father and mother, by the unbecoming way in which I thought I ought to dress. But after awhile it came to me, that it really took very little more time to look well than it did to look ill-dressed; and that if certain colors became the form and complexion that God had given me, and certain others did not, there could be no religion in wearing those not fitted to me. God made them all, and he must have meant some of them specially for me, just as he specially thought about me in other matters. Oh, I haven’t gone into the question very deeply; I want to understand it better. I am going to ask Mr. Roberts about it the very next time he comes. But, meantime, I feel sure that the Lord Jesus wants me to please my parents and my sister in every reasonable way. Sister Kitty is really uncomfortable if colors don’t assimilate, and what right have I to make her uncomfortable, so long as the very rose leaves are tinted with just the color of all others that seemed fitted to them?”
Susan mused.
“What would you do,” she asked presently, “if you had been made with that sense of the fitness of things left out? I mean, suppose you hadn’t the least idea whether you ought to wear green, or yellow, or what. Some people are so constituted that they don’t know what you mean when you tell them that certain colors don’t assimilate; what are they to do?”
“Yes,” said Flossy, gently and sweetly, “I know what you mean, because people are made very differently about these things. I am trying to learn how to make bread. I don’t know in the least. I can make cake, and desserts, and all those things, but Mr. Roberts likes the bread that our cook makes, and as I don’t know how to make that kind, nor any other, I thought I ought to learn. It isn’t a bit natural to me. I have to be very particular to remember all the tiresome things about it; I hadn’t an idea there were so many. And I say to the cook, ‘Now, Katy, what am I to do next? this doesn’t look right at all.’ And she comes and looks over my shoulder, and says, ‘Why, child, you need more flour; always put in flour till you get rid of that dreadful stickiness.’ Then I say to myself, ‘That dreadful stickiness is to be gotten rid of, and flour will rid me of it, it seems,’ and I determine in my own mind that I will remember that item for future use. I don’t really like the work at all. It almost seems as though bread ought to be made without such an expenditure of time and strength. But it isn’t, you know, and so I try; and when I think of how Mr. Roberts likes it, I feel glad that I am taking time and pains to learn. You know there are so many things to remember about it, from the first spoonful of yeast, down to the dampening of the crust and tucking up the loaves when they come out of the oven, that it really takes a good deal of memory. I asked Mr. Roberts once if he thought there would be any impropriety in my asking for ability to take in all the details that I was trying to learn. He laughed at me a little—he often does—but he said there could be no impropriety in praying about anything that it was proper to do.”
“Thank you,” said Susan Erskine, promptly. Then she did what was an unusual thing for her to do. She came over to the daintily dressed little blossom on the sofa, and bending her tall form, kissed the delicately flushed cheek, lightly and tenderly.
“Ruth,” said little Flossy, as they made their way toward the street-car. “I think I like your new sister very much, indeed. I am not sure but she is going to be a splendid woman. I think she has it in her to be grandly good.”
“When did you become such a discerner of character, little girlie?” was Ruth’s answer, but she felt grateful to Flossy. The words had helped her.