'Well, did she try very hard to think of other ways?' asked Polly.
'She never looked especially noble to me. I thought she seemed like
a die-away, frizzlygig kind of a girl.'

'I wish, Miss Oliver, that you would be kind enough to remember that
Mrs. Pinkerton is one of my most intimate friends,' said Laura,
sharply. 'And I do wish, also, that you wouldn't talk loud enough to
be heard all through the canyon.'

The colour came into Polly's cheeks, but before she could answer,
Mrs. Winship walked in, stocking-basket in hand, and seated herself
in the little wicker rocking-chair. Polly's clarion tones had given
her a clue to the subject, and she thought the discussion needed
guidance.

'You were talking about Mrs. Pinkerton, girls,' she said, serenely.
'You say you are fond of her, Laura, dear, and it seems very
ungracious for me to criticise your friend; that is a thing which
most of us fail to bear patiently. But I cannot let you hold her up
as an ideal to be worshipped, or ask the girls to admire as a piece
of self-denial what I fear was nothing but indolence and self-
gratification. You are too young to talk of these things very much;
but you are not too young to make up your mind that when you agree to
live all your life long with a person, you must have some other
feeling than a determination not to teach school. Jessie Denton's
mother, my dear Laura, would never have asked the sacrifice of her
daughter's whole life; and Jessie herself would never have made it
had she been less vain, proud, and luxurious in her tastes, and a
little braver, more self-forgetting and industrious. These are hard