“How I do despise this cant—I can call it by no better name,” said the merchant, after the minister had left. “I am surprised to hear it from a man of Mr. Carlton’s talents. He might talk such stuff as this to me until doomsday, and I would not believe it.”
Mr. Townsend had a son and two daughters. The latter, Eveline and Eunice, were present during the conversation with the minister, and noticed the remarks of their father, after Mr. Carlton left. Some time afterward, when they were alone, Eunice, the younger of the two daughters, said, with unusual sobriety of manner, “Father treated what Mr. Carlton said very lightly; don’t you think so?”
“Indeed, I don’t know,” was the thoughtless reply of Eveline, who was noticing the effect of a costly diamond breast-pin with which her brother had, a day or two before, presented her. “Mr. Carlton has a strange way of talking, sometimes. I suppose he would—there! isn’t that brilliant, Eunie? If brother John could only see the effect! I’m a thousand times obliged to him. Isn’t it splendid, Eunie?”
“It is, indeed, Evie. But what were you going to say about Mr. Carlton?”
“Dear knows! I forget now. John must have given at least five hundred dollars for this pin, don’t you think he did?”
“I am sure I don’t know. I never think about how much a thing costs.”
“Jane Loming’s is admired by every body; but the diamonds in this are twice the size of those in hers, and it contains two to one. Just look how purely the light is sent back from the very bosom of each lucid gem. Could any thing be more brilliant! How I love gold and diamonds! They are nature’s highest and loveliest achievements.”
“In the mineral kingdom,” said Eunice, in her gentle way. “But gold and diamonds I love not half so well as I do flowers, nor are they half so beautiful. There is your glittering diamond. There is a flower not only far more beautiful, but with a spirit of perfume in its heart. And when I look into your eyes, sister, how dim and cold appear the inanimate gems that sparkle on your bosom. There are lovelier things in nature, Evie, than gold and diamonds.”
“You are a strange girl, Eunie,” returned Eveline, playfully. “I don’t know what to make of you, sometimes.”
“I don’t know what there is strange about me, sister,” said Eunice. “Have I not said the truth? Is not a flower a lovelier and more excellent thing than a brilliant stone, which, because it is the purest and rarest substance in the mineral kingdom, is prized the highest, but is still only a stone?”