Miss Prudence laughed at her comically aggrieved tone.

“It is hard to be nothing distinctive but short and stout and to wear your hair in a knot, as your grandmother does!  But the getting up head is something.”

“It doesn’t add to my beauty.  Miss Prudence, I’m afraid I’ll be a homely blue stocking.  And if I don’t teach, how shall I use my knowledge?  I cannot write a book, or even articles for the papers; and I must do something with the things I learn.”

“Every educated lady does not teach or write.”

“You do not,” answered Marjorie, thoughtfully; “only you teach Prue.  And I think it increases your influence, Miss Prudence.  How much you have taught Linnet and me!”

“I’m thinking about two faces I saw the other night at Mrs. Harrowgate’s tea table.  Both were strangers to me.  As the light fell over the face of one I thought I never saw anything so exquisite as to coloring:  the hair was shining like threads of gold; the eyes were the azure you see in the sky; lips and cheeks were tinted; the complexion I never saw excelled for dazzling fairness,—­we see it in a child’s face, sometimes.  At her side sat a lady:  older, with a quiet, grave face; complexion dark and not noticeable; hair the brown we see every day; eyes brown and expressive, but not finer than we often see.  Something about it attracted me from her bewitching neighbor, and I looked and compared.  One face was quiet, listening; the other was sparkling as she talked.  The grave dark face grew upon me; it was not a face, it was a soul, a human life with a history.  The lovely face was lovely still, but I do not care to see it again; the other I shall not soon forget.”

“But it was beauty you saw,” persisted Marjorie.

“Not the kind you girls were talking about.  A stranger passing through the room would not have noticed her beside the other.  The lovely face has a history, I was told after supper, and she is a girl of character.”

“Still—­I wish—­story books would not dwell so much on attitudes; and how the head sets on the shoulders; and the pretty hands and slender figures.  It makes girls think of their hands and their figures.  It makes this girl I know not wrap up carefully for fear of losing her ‘slender’ figure.  And the eyelashes and the complexion!  It makes us dissatisfied with ourselves.”

“The Lord knew what kind of books would be written when he said that man looketh on the out ward appearance—­”

“But don’t Christian writers ever do it?”

“Christian writers fall into worldly ways.  There are lovely girls and lovely women in the world; we meet them every day.  But if we think of beauty, and write of it, and exalt it unduly, we are making a use of it that God does not approve; a use that he does not make of it himself.  How beauty and money are scattered everywhere.  God’s saints are not the richest and most beautiful.  He does not lavish beauty and money upon those he loves the