Mrs. Thayer, in the list of the worst things human nature knows, and does."
"Then you would have a set of dunces. I should just like to be told, Mr. Eberstein, how on that principle you would get young people to study. In the case of girls you cannot do it by beating; nor in the case of boys, after they have got beyond being little boys. Then emulation comes in, and they work like beavers to get the start of one another. And so we have honours, and prizes, and distinctions. Take all that away, and how would you do, Mr. Eberstein?"
Mr. Eberstein was looking fondly into a pair of young eyes that were fixedly gazing at him. So looking, he spoke,.
"There is another sort of 'Well done!' which I would like my Dolly and Miss Christina to try for. If they are in earnest in trying for that, they will study!" said Mr. Eberstein.
Mrs. Thayer thought, apparently, that it was no use talking on the subject with a visionary man; and she turned to something else. The party left the dinner-table, and Dolly took her new acquaintance upstairs to show her the treasure contained in Mrs. Eberstein's old bookcase.
"Mr. Eberstein is rather a strange man, isn't he?" said Miss Christina on the way.
"No," said Dolly. "I don't think he is. What makes you say so?"
"I never heard any one talk like that before."
"Perhaps," said Dolly, stopping short on the landing place and looking at her companion. Then she seemed to change her manner of attack. "Who do you want to please most?" she said.
"With my studies? Why, mamma, of course."
"I would rather please the Lord Jesus," said Dolly.
"But I was talking about school work," retorted the other. "You don't suppose He cares about our lessons?"
"I guess He does," said Dolly. They were still standing on the landing place, looking into each other's eyes.
"But that's impossible. Think! – French lessons, and English lessons, and music and dancing, and all of it. That couldn't be, you know."
"Do you love Jesus?" said Dolly.
"Love him? I do not know," said Christina colouring. "I am a member of the church, if that is what you mean."
Dolly began slowly to go up the remaining stairs. "I think we ought to study to please Him," she said.
"I don't see how it should please him," said the other a little out of humour. "I don't see how He should care about such little things."
"Why not?" said Dolly. "If your mother cares, and my mother cares. Jesus loves us better than they do, and I guess He cares more than they do."
Christina was silenced now, as her mother had been, and followed Dolly thinking there were a pair of uncomfortably strange people in the house. The next minute Dolly was not strange at all, but as much a child as any of her fellows. She had unlocked the precious bookcase, and with the zeal of a connoisseur and the glee of a discoverer she was enlarging upon the treasures therein stowed away.
"Here is 'Henry Milner,'" she said, taking down three little red volumes. "Have you read that? Oh, it is delightful! I like it almost best of all. But I have not had time to read much yet. Here is 'Harry and Lucy,' and 'Rosamond,' and 'Frank.' I have just looked at them. And 'Sandford and Merton.' do you know 'Sandford and Merton'? I have just read that."
"There are the 'Arabian Nights,'" said Christina.
"Is that good? I haven't read much yet. I don't know almost any of them."
"'The Looking-Glass'" – Christina went on – "'Pity's Gift' – 'Father's Tales.'"
"Those are beautiful," Dolly put in. "I read one, about 'Grandfather's old arm-chair.' Oh, it's very interesting."
"'Elements of Morality'" – Christina read further on the back of a brown book.
"That don't sound good, but I guess it is good," said Dolly. "I just peeped in, and 'Evenings at Home' looks pretty. Here is 'Robinson Crusoe,' and 'Northern Regions;' I want to read that very much. I guess it's delightful."
"Have you ever been to school before?" said Christina. The books had a faint interest for her.
"No," said Dolly.
"Nor have I; but I know somebody who has been at Mrs. Delancy's, and she says there is one lovely thing at that school. Every month they go somewhere."
"They – go – somewhere," Dolly echoed the words. "Who go?"
"Everybody; teachers and scholars and all. There is a holiday; and Mrs. Delancy takes them all to see something. One time it was a rope walk, I think; and another time it was a paper-mill; and sometimes it's a picture-gallery. It's something very interesting."
"I suppose we are not obliged to go, are we, if we don't want to?"
"Oh, but we do want to. I do."
"I would just as lief be at home with my Aunt Harry," said Dolly, looking lovingly at the book-case. But Christina turned away from it.
"They dress a great deal at this school," she said. "Does your mother dress you a great deal?"
"I don't know," said Dolly. "I don't know what you mean."
"Well, what's your school dress? what is it made of?"
"My school dress for every day! It is grey poplin. It is not new."
"Poplin will do, I suppose," said Christina. "But some of the girls wear silk; old silk dresses, you know, but really handsome still, and very stylish."
"What do you mean by 'stylish'?" said Dolly.
"Why don't you know what 'stylish' means?"
"No."
Christina looked doubtfully at her new little companion. Where could Dolly have come from, and what sort of people could she belong to, who did not know that? The truth was, that Dolly being an only child and living at home with her father and mother, had led a very childish life up to this time; and her mother, owing to some invalidism, had lately been withdrawn from the gay world and its doings. So, though the thing was greatly upon her mother's heart, the word had never made itself familiar to Dolly's ear. Christina was reassured, however, by observing that the little girl's dress was quite what it ought to be, and certainly bespoke her as belonging to people who "knew what was what." So the practice was all right, and Dolly needed only instruction in the theory.
"'Stylish,'" – she repeated. "It means – It is very hard to tell you what it means. Don't you know? 'Stylish' means that things have an air that belongs to the right kind of thing, and only what you see in a certain sort of people. It is the way things look when people know how."
"Know how, what?" inquired Dolly.
"Know how things ought to be; how they ought to be worn, and how they ought to be done."
"Then everybody ought to be stylish," said Dolly.
"Yes, but you cannot, my dear, unless you happen to know how."
"But I should think one could always know how things ought to be," Dolly went on. "The Bible tells."
"The
