it's intended, it'll never look well. Now, here's Peter's
boots--I call 'em handsome."

He lifted one of them as he spoke and put it on the table, where it
seemed to take up a great deal of room. Lilac looked at it with a
puzzled air; she saw nothing handsome in it. It was enormously thick
and deeply wrinkled across the toes, which were turned upwards as though
with many and many a weary tramp.

"I call 'em handsome," pursued Joshua. "Because for why? Because
they're fit for ploughin' in the stiffest soil. Because they'll keep
out wet and never give in the seams. They're fit for what they're meant
to do. But now you just fancy," he went on, raising one finger, "as how
I'd made 'em of shiny leather, and put paper soles to 'em, and pointed
tips to the toes. How'd they look in a ploughed field or a muddy lane?
Or s'pose Peter he went and capered about in these 'ere on a velvet
carpet an' tried to dance. How'd he look?"

The idea of the loutish Peter capering anywhere, least of all on a
velvet carpet, made Lilac smile in spite of Uncle Joshua's great
gravity.

"Why, he'd look silly," he continued; "as silly as a country girl, who's
got to scrub an' wash an' make the butter, dressed out in silks an'
fandangoes. She ought to be too proud of being what she is, to try and
look like what she isn't. Give me down that big brown book yonder an'
I'll read you something fine about that."

Lilac reached the book from the shelf with the greatest reverence; it
was the only one amongst Joshua's collection that she often begged to
look at, because it was full of curious pictures. It was Lavater's
Physiognomy; having found the passage he wanted, Joshua read it very
slowly aloud:

"In the mansion of God there are to his glory vessels of wood, of
silver, and of gold. All are serviceable, all profitable, all capable
of divine uses, all the instruments of God: but the wood continues wood,
the silver silver, the gold gold. Though the golden should remain
unused, still they are gold. The wooden may be made more serviceable
than the golden, but they continue wood. Let each be what he is, so
will he be sufficiently good, for man himself, and God. The violin
cannot have the sound of the flute, nor the trumpet of the drum."

He had just finished the last line, and still held one knotty brown
finger raised to mark the important words, when there was a low knock at
the door, and immediately afterwards it opened a little way