CARELESS GRACIE'S LESSON
Gracie and Norma Wilson were sisters, aged respectively, fourteen and twelve. But I think that two sisters were never more unlike than were Gracie and Norma. Norma, who was the younger, was as orderly a little lady as one could wish to see, while Gracie was just the reverse.
Often their mother would say, in a despairing tone, "Gracie, I do wish you would care for your room and frocks as Norma cares for hers. Why, you go out with buttons loose, or entirely off your dress, or your frocks unmended, not to speak of the untidiness of your room. If only you would take an interest in such things it would gratify me so much. Without an orderly mind no girl can aspire to become a useful member of society."
Then Gracie would try to make excuses for her shortcomings, pleading this thing or that as the real cause of her negligence. But her poor mother, at her wits' end to devise some way by which Gracie might be aroused to a sense of her duty, would shake her head and say: "Dearest child, there is no excuse for your slighting your work, either on your clothes or in your room. You have plenty of time for both and should force yourself to perform your share of the labor that falls to you to do."
And while Mrs. Wilson was thus advising and entreating her eldest daughter to do her duty in such small household matters, Norma was busy tidying up her dainty room or sewing on her summer frocks, mending lace, ribbons, or putting on buttons and hooks and eyes. She was such a cheerfully busy little miss that Gracie's laziness was the more pronounced by contrast with her industry.
One afternoon, while Gracie was sitting idly in the hammock which swung in the broad, awning-covered porch, the phone bell rang and Norma answered it. The message which reached her ear made her smile very happily, and she answered, "Oh, yes, indeed, we shall be delighted to go, and thank you for both of us ever and ever so much. What time shall we be ready—at four o'clock this afternoon? All right. And we shall prepare some luncheon? Yes, all right, we'll be most happy to do so. Good-bye."
Then to the porch ran Norma, crying to Gracie, excitedly: "Oh, sister, Mrs. Jackson has invited us—you and me—to go with her and Flora and Tommy for a long automobile ride. We are to stop on the beach—down at Blake Island—and have a picnic supper by moonlight. We'll return home about nine o'clock. Won't that be splendid? I know mamma will be so happy to have us go, so I accepted for both of us. Mamma won't be home for over an hour. And we are to start at four. It is now two o'clock. We'll have to be stirring if we are ready when Mrs. Jackson calls. And she must not be kept waiting."