"You cannot always run away," continued her cousin. "Big as it is, the world is not big enough to furnish hiding-places for all the people who are afraid to face their fellow-men. And since you cannot run away, your plain duty is to be brave and make the best of it. Now, Cannie, there are two things which may help you to do this, two thoughts which you can keep in mind; and I wish you would try to remember them when you feel a fit of fright or of stiffness coming on."
"What are they?"
"One is, that you are but one little insignificant atom among thousands. People are not thinking about you or noticing you very particularly. You are not of much consequence except to yourself and the few friends who love you. This would be a mortifying fact, if vanity were your trouble; but as it is not, it is a comfortable one. And just as nobody notices you specially, so all the world is not engaged afterward in recollecting all your little mistakes and the stupid things you have said. Unless you have done something very queer, they forget about you as soon as they lose sight of you. I know what miseries sensitive girls undergo in thinking over their foolish speeches and actions, and imagining that every one remembers them as distinctly as they themselves do."
Cannie couldn't help smiling. "Cousin Kate, how can you know about all those things?" she asked.
"Because I was a girl myself once, and as foolish as any of the rest of you; and I have not forgotten how it feels to be a girl," said her cousin, gayly. "That is the use of growing old, Cannie. You can show the way to younger people, and make the road you have walked over a little easier for them.—But to go back to what we were talking about, our own insignificance is one helpful thought, as I said; the other is, that kindliness is one of the Christian virtues, and it is just as much a duty to practise it as it is to be honest and temperate."
Candace drew a long breath.
"It would be perfectly delightful to keep thinking like that always," she said; "the only thing is that I am afraid I should forget when the time came. I wish you could give me an exact rule, Cousin Kate, just what to say and how to act. I would try ever so hard to follow it."
"I know you would," said Mrs. Gray; "but there is no exact rule that I can give, except the Golden one, to do to others just as you would like them to do to you. If you feel stiff, be sure to look cordial. Smile, and shake hands as if you meant it. Try to look interested in what people are saying to you. A good listener helps on conversation as well as a good talker. If you are friendly and warm in your manner, other people will warm to you instinctively. Try it, Cannie, and see if I am not right. And now we will not talk any more about ourselves or our shyness, but drive into the Fort and listen to the music. I caught a strain from the Band just then, and I recollect that this is a 'Fort Day.'"
So in they drove, clattered between walls and embankments, and over a steep paved incline beneath a great arch, and found themselves in an open square, with buildings of solid masonry on all sides, in the midst of which the band was stationed. Other carriages were drawn up to listen to the music, and officers in uniform were coming and going, and talking to the ladies in the carriages. One of these officers, a nice old Major, with a bald spot under his gold-banded cap, knew Mrs. Gray, and came to welcome her. His "girls" were gone over to Newport to a lawn-party, he said; but he insisted on taking Mrs. Gray and Cannie in to see their quarters, which were in a casemate, in close neighborhood to one of the great guns. Here he brewed them a delicious cup of tea; and afterward, at Mrs. Gray's request, he took Candace to see the magazines, and some of the curious underground passages which connect one side of the Fort with the other. Cannie thought these extremely interesting, and like all the caves on desert islands which she had ever read about; for they were narrow, dark, and mysterious, they smelt very close, and all sorts of odd funguses and formations were growing on the roofs overhead.
These adventures chased the worry from her mind and the anxious puckers from her forehead; and she went home quite happily, without recurring again to the subject of their late conversation. But she did not forget it, and it bore fruit. Mrs. Gray noted, without seeming to be on the watch, the efforts which Candace thenceforward made to overcome her shyness. She saw her force herself to come forward, force herself to smile, to speak, when all the time she was quaking inwardly; and she felt that there was real power of character required for such an effort. Quiet Candace would always be; modest and retiring it was her nature to be: but gradually she learned not to seem cold and stiff; and when her cousin saw her, as she sometimes did, forgetting herself in talking to some one, and lighting up into her easy, natural, bright manner, she felt that the rather hard lesson administered that afternoon on the ocean drive had not been in vain. Rome was not built in a day, and ease of manner is not acquired in a moment; but Candace had at last got hold of a right idea, and there was hope that with time people less charitable even than "perfect angels" might pronounce her "agreeable."