Miss Yorke held her head very high, and her color deepened. "I will then put my MS. into the fire," she said in a quiet tone, casting her eyes down.
Her father gave an impatient shrug. "Not at all!" he replied. "But you will take advice, and try to think that you are not above criticism."
"Clara has an idea," Carl interposed. He had been bending over some papers with his younger sister. "She also turns to travels, but very modestly. She calls them gleanings, and her motto is from De Quincey: 'Not the flowers are for the pole, but the pole is for the flowers.' Here is the preface. Shall I read it?"
"Oh! I am afraid of papa!" Clara cried, blushing very much. But Mr. Yorke, who only now learned that his second daughter was also a scribbler, laughingly promised to be lenient; and she suffered herself to be persuaded. They all looked kindly on her, even Melicent, in spite of her own mortification; and Carl read:
"I do not presume to write a volume descriptive of European travel. Many, great and small, have been in that field, some reaping wheat, others binding up tares. These leaves are offered by one who gathered a few nodding things which no one valued, seeing them there, but which some one may, if fortune favor, smile at, since they grew there. One such might say: You're but a weed; but you grew in a chink of crumbling history; I know where, for I measured the arch, and sketched the colonnade. And I recognize the green leaves of you, and the silver thread of a root, with a speck of rich old soil clinging yet. And, à propos, I saw there a child asleep in the shade, with a group of spotted yellow lilies standing guard, as if they had sprung up since, and because she had closed her eyes, and might change to a group of tigers if you should go too near. She had long eyelashes, and she smiled in her sleep.
"I do not claim to be an artist, O travelled reader! but I stretch a hand to touch the artist in you."
"That isn't bad," Mr. Yorke said immediately. "And your motto is very pretty. I am glad to have you familiar with De Quincey. He is good company. He is a man who does not overlook delicate hints, and he is respectful and just to children. He annoys me sometimes by a weak irony, and by explaining too much; but, I repeat, he is good company."
Immediately Clara passed from the deeps to the heights. Her bosom heaved, her eyes flashed. She felt herself famous.
"Now let us hear a chapter of the gleanings," said her father.
"Why, I haven't written anything but the preface," Clara was forced to acknowledge.