“Sakes alive!  I should be scar’t to death to own all that,” said Jane.

“Well,” said Clara, “if you will show me how to knit some for myself, I will be willing to scare you a little.  I would like to give you enough to make a pair or two of stockings for yourself.  Chose your own colors,” and she emptied the contents of the box on the lounge at her side.

“You don’t mean it, Mis’ De-mond.”

“Certainly I do, take any shade you prefer, and if Emily has needles, we will go right to work on our cutting.”

The right string was touched, the cutting started, and when Jane North left us, she whispered to me: 

“I like that woman, and I don’t care whether she is a Baptist, or what she is, she’s a lady.”

Those stockings averted much, for her head was full of wonder talk.

I reminded Clara of the indignation she felt at her expressions, when she first saw her, and told her I did not suppose she ever would desire to look at her again.

“Why, Emily,” she said, “I never feel like annihilating people whose ideas are all wrong.  They are but representatives at the most, and I would rather desire to help these eaters of husks to find the true bread that shall bring to them comfort and peace.  I should wish to fill their hearts so full that the rays of this inner light shall radiate around them, touching with the magic of good deeds all the suffering our world contains.  This would leave no empty rooms in the house of our understanding; all would be filled with tenants of good-will and loving faith, bearing charity and love each toward the other; and uncultivated fields would be found no more.  I thought if I could touch Miss North in the right spot, I might fill her mind, for a few brief hours at least, with something beside her gossip.  If this could be done every day in the week, she would lose sight of it altogether, and like a tree engrafted with better fruit, on these new thought-branches beautiful wisdom apples might grow and ripen.  If she comes again I will find something as new to her, I hope, as I have found to-day.”

“What a wonderful compound you are, Clara,” I said, “and what perfect symmetry nature has given to you, while I am your antipodes.”

“What’s that you are calling yourself?” said Aunt Hildy.

“Oh, something just different from all that is good and true enough to belong to Clara!”

“‘Pears to me you’re gettin’ some dretful big word now-a-days; when you want me to understand you, talk plain English.”

Hal, who had entered that moment, laughed heartily.  “So I say, Aunt Hildy.  Our Emily is going to be a blue-stocking, I fear.  Housework will suffer before long, for housework and book cannot go together.”

“No more than ploughs and plaster,” I added.

“Not a bit more, sister mine,” and he passed his arm around my waist,—­he often did this now-a-days,—­and whispered, “give me a chance to say something to you.”