“What do you say?”

“What do you?” I answered; for, like other bad people, I had the greatest respect for good people’s opinions.

“I think—­a small—­silver salver!”

“Do you think so, really?”

“Yes, Del.  That will be good; silver, you know, is always good to have; and it will be handsome and useful always.”

“What! for us?”

“Yes,—­pretty to hand a cup of tea on, or a glass of wine,—­pretty to set in the middle of a long table with a vase of flowers on it, when you have the Court and High-Sheriff to dine,—­as you will, of course, every year,—­or with your spoon-goblet.  Oh, there are plenty of ways to make a small silver salver useful.  Mrs. Harris says she doesn’t see how any one can keep house without a silver salver.”

The last sentence she said with a laugh, for she knew I thought so much of what Mrs. Harris said.

“We’ve kept house all our lives without one, Laura.”

“Yes,—­but I often wish we had one, for all that.  As Mrs. Harris says, ‘It gives such an air!’”

What a dreadful utilitarian Laura was, I thought.  Now, the whole world and Boston were full of beautiful things,—­full of things that had no special usefulness, but were absolutely and of themselves beautiful.  And such a thing I wanted,—­such a presence before me,—­“a thing of beauty and of joy forever,”—­something that would not speak directly or indirectly of labor, of something to be wrought out with toil, or associated with common, every-day objects.  When that life should come to which I secretly looked forward,—­when my soul should bound into a more radiant atmosphere, where the clouds, if any were, should be all gold- and silver-tinted, and where my sorrows, love-colored, were to be sweeter than other people’s joys,—­in that life, there would be moments of sweet abandonment to the simple sense of happiness.  Then I should want something on which my mind might linger, my eye rest,—­as the bird rests for an instant, to turn her plumage in the sun, and take another and loftier flight.  Not a word of all this, which common minds called farrago, but which had its truth to me, did I utter to Laura.  Of course, none of these things bear transplanting or expressing.

“Laura, do you like that statue of Mercury in Mrs. Gore’s library?”

“Very much.  But I am sure I should be tired of seeing it every day, standing on one toe.  I should be tired, if he wasn’t.”

“Mrs. Gore says she never tires of it.  I asked her.  She says it is a delight to her to lie on the sofa and trace the beautiful undulations of his figure.  How airy!  It looks as if it would fly again without the least effort,—­as if it had just ‘new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill’!  Don’t you think it perfect, Laura?”

“Well—­yes,—­I suppose so.  I am not so enthusiastic as you are about it.”

“Why don’t you like it?”

I would not let Laura see how disappointed I was.