"Delie says," Betty added, "it's because, if you are, when you grow up people won't think anything of you."

Grandmother Beers held her sweet-peas to her face.

"If," she said, after a moment, "you wanted to do something wicked more than you ever wanted to do anything in the world--as much as you'd want a drink tomorrow if you hadn't had one to-day--and if nobody ever knew--would any of those reasons keep you from doing it?"

We consulted one another's look, and shifted. We knew how thirsty that would be. Already we were thirsty, in thinking about it.

"If I were in your place," grandmother said, "I'm not sure those reasons would keep me. I rather think they wouldn't--always."

We stared at her. It was true that they didn't always keep us. Were not two of us "in our rooms" even now?

Grandmother leaned forward--I know how the shadows of the apple leaves fell on her black lace cap and how the pink sweet-peas were reflected in her delicate face.

"Suppose," she said, "that instead of any of those reasons somebody gave you this reason: That the earth is a great flower--a flower that has never really blossomed yet. And that, when it blossoms, life is going to be more beautiful than we have ever dreamed, or than fairy stories have ever pretended. And suppose our doing one way, and not another, makes the flower come a little nearer to blossom. But our doing the other way puts back the time when it can blossom. Then which would you want to do?"

"Oh, make it grow, make it grow," we all cried; and I felt a secret relief: Grandmother was playing a game with us, after all.

"And suppose that everything made a difference to it," she went on, "every little thing--from telling a lie, on down to going to get a drink for somebody and drinking first yourself out in the kitchen.

Suppose that everything made a difference, from hurting somebody on purpose, down to making up the bed and pulling the bedspread tight so that the wrinkles in the blanket won't show."

At this we looked at one another in some consternation. How did grandmother know?

"Until after awhile," she said, "you should find out that everything--loving, going to school, playing, working, bathing, sleeping, were all just to make this flower grow. Wouldn't it be fun to help?"

"Yes. Oh, yes." We were all agreed about that. It would be great fun to help.

"Well, then suppose," said grandmother, "that as you helped, you found out something else: that in each of you, say, where your heart is, or where your breath is, there was a flower trying to blossom through!

And that only as you help the earth flower to blossom could your flower blossom. And that your doing one way would make your flower droop its head and grow dark and shrivel up. But your doing the other way would make it grow, and turn beautiful colors--so that, bye and bye, every one of your bodies would be just a sheath for this flower.

Which way then would you rather do?"

"Oh, make it grow, make it grow," we said again.

And Mary Elizabeth added longingly: "Wouldn't it be fun if it was true?"

"It is true," said Grandmother Beers.

She sat there, softly smiling over her pink sweet-peas. We looked at her silently. Then I remembered that her face had always seemed to me to be somehow light within. May be it was her flower showing through!

"Grandmother!" I cried, "is it true--is it true?"

"It is true," she repeated. "And whether the earth flower and other people's flowers and your flower are to bloom or not is what living is about. And everything makes a difference. Isn't that a good reason for not being wicked?"

We all looked up in her face, something in us leaping and answering to what she said. And I know that we understood.

"Oh," Mary Elizabeth whispered presently to Betty, "hurry home and tell Margaret Amelia. It'll make it so much easier when she comes out to her supper."

That night, on the porch, alone with Mother and Father, I inquired into something that still was not clear.

"But how can you tell which things are wicked? And which ones are wrong and which things are right?"

Father put out his hand and touched my hand. He was looking at me with a look that I knew--and his smile for me is like no other smile that I have ever known.

"Something will tell you," he said, "always."

"Always?" I doubted.

"Always," he said. "There will be other voices. But if you listen, something will tell you always. And it is all you need."

I looked at Mother. And by her nod and her quiet look I perceived that all this had been known about for a long time.

"That is why Grandma Bard is coming to live with us," she said, "not just because we wanted her, but because--that said so."

In us all a flower--and something saying something! And the earth flower trying to blossom ... I looked down the street: at Mr.

Branchett walking in his garden, at the light shining from windows, at the folk sauntering on the sidewalk, and toward town where the band was playing. We all knew about this together then. This was why everything was! And there were years and years to make it come through.

What if I, alone among them all, had never found out.

THE HOLY PLACE

At silver of gray lines; at look of lace About a woman's throat; at little feet, Curled close in hand that clings; at stir of sweet Old gardens; at the flow and dip and grace Of sweeping fabric; at the phantom race of shadow ripples in the tides of wheat, Where great, still spirits murmur as they meet-- Souls see Their God as in a holy place.

What of the wrinkled face, the poor, coarse hands, Dead leaves and ruined walls in fields that stand, Rattling sharp husks? Of little feet that stray From clinging hands, and never find the way?

He knows no holy place for whom the clod Stands not an altar to the living God.

FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE

Published by Permission of The Macmillan Co., New York.

We are one long street, rambling from sun to sun, inheriting traits of the parent country road which we unite. And we are cross streets, members of the same family, properly imitative, proving our ancestorship in a primeval genius for trees, or bursting out in inexplicable weaknesses of Court-House, Engine-House, Town Hall, and Telephone Office. Ultimately our stock dwindled out in a slaughter-house and a few detached houses of milk men. The cemetery is delicately put behind them, under a hill. There is nothing mediaeval in all this, one would say. But then see how we wear our rue:

When one of us telephones, she will scrupulously ask for the number, for it says so at the top of every page. "Give me 1-1," she will put it, with an impersonality as fine as if she were calling for four figures. And central will answer:

"Well, I just saw Mis' Holcomb go 'crost the street. I'll call you, if you want, when she comes back."

Or, "I don't think you better ring the Helman's just now. They were awake 'most all night with one o' Mis' Helman's attacks."

Or, "Doctor June's invited to Mis' Syke's for tea. Shall I give him to you there?"

The telephone is modern enough. But in our use of it, is there not a flavor as of an Elder Time, to be caught by Them of Many Years from Now? And already we may catch this flavor, as our Britain great-great-lady grandmothers, and more, may have been conscious of the old fashion of sitting in bowers. If only they were conscious like that! To be sure of it would be to touch their hands in the margin of the ballad books.

Or we telephone to the Livery Barn and Boarding Stable for the little blacks, celebrated for their self-control in encounters with the Proudfits' motor car. The stable-boy answers that the little blacks are at "the funeral." And after he has gone off to ask his employer, who in his unofficial moments is our neighbor, our church choir bass, our landlord even, comes and tells us that, after all, we may have the little blacks, and he himself brings them round at once--the same little blacks that we meant all along. And when, quite naturally, we wonder at the boy's version, we learn: "Oh, why, the blacks was standin' just acrost the street, waitin' at the church door, hitched to the hearse. I took 'em out an' put in the bays. I says to myself: 'The corpse won't care.'" Some way the Proudfits' car and the stable telephone must themselves have slipped from modernity to old fashioned before that incident shall quite come into its own.

So it is with certain of our domestic ways. For example, Mis'

Postmaster Sykes--in Friendship Village every woman assumes for given name the employment of her husband--has some fine modern china and much solid silver in extremely good taste, so much, indeed, that she is wont to confess to having cleaned forty, or sixty, or seventy-five pieces--"seventy-five pieces of solid silver have I cleaned this morning. You can say what you want to, nice things are a rill care."

Yet, surely this is the proper conjunction, Mis' Sykes is currently reported to rise in the night preceding the day of her house cleaning, and to take her carpets out in the back yard, and there softly to sweep and sweep them so that, at their official cleaning next day, the neighbors may witness how little dirt is whipped out on the line.

Ought she not to have old-fashioned silver and egg-shell china and drop-leaf mahogany to fit the practice instead of dazzling and wild-rose patterns in "solid and art curtains, and mission chairs and a white-enameled refrigerator, and a gas range?"