Part 21 (1/2)
”Oh, that is all right! Of course I should have been vexed if you had not brought it back, because I should have missed it as soon as I opened the box. I was mean about it, anyway. I might have let you take it to try on Clementina. Here, I'll give it to you now, to make up for being stingy.”
Annie shook her head, and refused to take the once coveted gift from her companion's outstretched hand.
”Then I'll lend it to you for ever and ever,” continued Lucy, impulsively.
”No, I don't want it now,” answered Annie. ”Good-bye!”
”Will you go to walk with me to-morrow after Sunday-school?” urged Lucy, as she followed her to the door.
”P'rhaps!” replied her little friend, hastening away.
The inquiry brought her a feeling of relief, however. Lucy evidently had no thought of ”cutting” her acquaintance. The sense of having done right made her heart light and happy as she ran home. The experience had taught her that one must learn to see many pretty things without wis.h.i.+ng to possess them; and also that small acts of disobedience and a habit of meddling may lead further than one at first intends.
Annie became a lovely woman, a devoted daughter, a most self-sacrificing character, and one scrupulously exact in her dealings with others; but she never forgot ”that red silk frock.”
”A LESSON WITH A SEQUEL.”
”How strange that any one should be so superst.i.tious!” said Emily Mahon. Rosemary Beckett had been telling a group of girls of the ridiculous practices of an old negro woman employed by her mother as a laundress.
”People must be very ignorant to believe such things,” declared Anna Shaw, disdainfully.
”Yet,” observed Miss Graham, closing the new magazine which she had been looking over, ”it is surprising how many persons, who ought to know better, are addicted to certain superst.i.tions, and cannot be made to see that it is not only foolish but wrong to yield to them.”
”Well,” began Rosemary, ”I am happy to say that is not a failing of mine.”
”I think everything of the kind is nonsensical,” added Kate Parsons.
”I'm not a bit superst.i.tious either,” volunteered Emily.
”Nor I,” interposed Anna.
”I despise such absurdities,” continued May Johnston.
”My dear girls,” laughed Miss Graham, ”I'll venture to say that each one of you has a pet superst.i.tion, which influences you more or less, and which you ought to overcome.”
This a.s.sertion was met by a chorus of indignant protests.
”Why, Cousin Irene!” cried Emily.
”O, Miss Graham, how _can_ you think so!”
”The very idea!” etc., etc., chimed in the others.
Everybody liked Miss Irene Graham. She lived with her cousins, the Mahons, and supported herself by giving lessons to young girls who for various reasons did not attend a regular school. Her cla.s.ses were popular, not only because she was bright and clever, and had the faculty of imparting what she knew; but because, as parents soon discovered, she taught her pupils good, sound common-sense, as well as ”the shallower knowledge of books.” Cousin Irene had not forgotten how she used to think and feel when she herself was a young girl, and therefore she was able to look at the world from a girl's point of view, to sympathize with her dreams and undertakings. She did not look for very wise heads upon young shoulders; but when she found that her pupils had foolish notions, or did not behave sensibly, she tried to make them see this for themselves; and we all know from experience that what we learn in that way produces the most lasting impression.
The girls now gathered around her were members of the literature cla.s.s, which met on Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day mornings at the Mahons'. As they considered themselves accomplished and highly cultivated for their years, it was mortifying to be accused of being so unenlightened as to believe in omens.
”No, I haven't a particle of superst.i.tion,” repeated Rosemary, decidedly. ”There's one thing I won't do, though. I won't give or accept a present of anything sharp--a knife or scissors, or even a pin,--because, the saying is, it cuts friends.h.i.+p. I've found it so, too. I gave Clara Hayes a silver hair-pin at Christmas, and a few weeks after we quarrelled.”
”There is the fault, popping up like a Jack-in-the box!” said Miss Irene. ”But, if I remember, Clara was a new acquaintance of yours in the holidays, and you and she were inseparable. The ardor of such extravagant friends.h.i.+p soon cools. Before long you concluded you did not like her so well as at first; then came the disagreement. But is it not silly to say the pin had anything to do with the matter? Would it not have been the same if you had given her a book or a picture?”