I had no sooner spoken than I heartily wished that I had held my peace; for it all at once occurred to me that green was perhaps the color for an alien or mere hireling, in which light they perhaps regarded me.
"Oh, Smith, can you not guess so simple a thing?" said Edra, placing her white hands on my shoulders and smiling straight into my face.
How beautiful she looked, standing there with her eyes so near to mine! "Tell me why, Edra?" I said, still with a lingering apprehension.
"Why, look at the color of my eyes and skin—would this green tint be suitable for me to wear?"
"Oh, is that the reason!" cried I, immensely relieved. "I think, Edra, you would look very beautiful in any color that is on the earth, or in the rainbow above the earth. But am I so different from you all?"
"Oh yes, quite different—have you never looked at yourself? Your skin is whiter and redder, and your hair has a very different color. It will look better when it grows long, I think. And your eyes—do you know that they never change! for when we look at you closely they are still blue-gray, and not green."
"No; I wish they were," said I. "Now I shall value my clothes a hundred times more, since you have taken so much pains to make them—well, what shall I say?—harmonize, I suppose, with the peculiar color of my mug. Dash it all, I'm blundering again! I mean—I mean—don't you know——"
Edra laughed and gave it up. Then we all laughed; for now evidently my blundering did not so much matter, since I had shed my outer integument, and come forth like a snake (with a divided tail) in a brand new skin.
Presently I missed Yoletta from the room, and desiring above all things to have some word of congratulation from her lips, I went off to seek her. She was standing under the portico waiting for me. "Come," she said, and proceeded to lead me into the music-room, where we sat down on one of the couches close to the dais; there she produced some large white tablets, and red chalk pencils or crayons.
"Now, Smith, I am going to begin teaching you," said she, with the grave air of a young schoolmistress; "and every afternoon, when your work is done, you must come to me here."