"You know very well what I mean. You know a time may come when you would like to have your hands white and delicate."
"The time is come now," said Lois, laughing. "I have not to wait for it. I like white hands, and delicate hands, as well as anybody. Mine must do their work, all the same. Something might be said for my feet, too, I suppose," she added, with another laugh.
At the moment she had finished outlining an other bed, and was now trampling a little hard border pathway round it, making the length of her foot the breadth of the pathway, and setting foot to foot close together, so bit by bit stamping it round. Mrs. Barclay looked on, and wished some body else could have looked on, at the bright, fresh face under the little old hat, and the free action and spirit and accuracy with which everything that either feet or hands did was done. Somehow she forgot the coarse dress, and only saw the delicate creature in it.
"Lois, I do not like it!" she began again. "Do you know, some people are very particular about these little things—fastidious about them. You may one day yet want to please one of those very men."
"Not unless he wants to please me first!" said Lois, with a glance from her path-treading.
"Of course. I am supposing that."
"I don't know him!" said Lois. "And I don't see him in the distance!"
"That proves nothing."
"And it wouldn't make any difference if I did."
"You are mistaken in thinking that. You do not know yet what it is to be in love, Lois."