in which all
was preeminently as it should be.

But,--as I would say if you could not see it for yourself--this is
a digression. We will go back again.

"If it were any use!" said Desire, shaking out the deep plaits as
she unfastened them from the band. "But you're only a piece of
everybody after all. You haven't anything really new or particular
to yourself, when you've done. And it takes up so much time. Last
year, this was so pretty! _Isn't_ anything actually pretty in
itself, or can't they settle what it is? I should think they had
been at it long enough."

"Fashions never were so graceful as they are this minute," said Mrs.
Megilp. "Of course it is art, like everything else, and progress.
The world is getting educated to a higher refinement in it, every
day. Why, it's duty, child!" she continued, exaltedly. "Think what
the world would be if nobody cared. We ought to make life beautiful.
It's meant to be. There's not only no virtue in ugliness, but almost
no virtue _with_ it, I think. People are more polite and
good-natured when they are well dressed and comfortable."

"_That's_ dress, too, though," said Desire, sententiously. "You've
got to stay at home four days, and rip, and be tired, and cross, and
tried-on-to, and have no chance to do anything else, before you can
put it all on and go out and be good-natured and bland, and help put
the beautiful face on the world, _one_ day. I don't believe it's
political economy."

"Everybody doesn't have to do it for themselves. Really, when I hear
people blamed for dress and elegance,--why, the very ones who have
the most of it are those who sacrifice the least time to it. They
just go and order what they want, and there's the end of it. When it
comes home, they put it on, and it might as well be a flounced silk
as a plain calico."

"But we _do_ have to think, Mrs. Megilp. And work and worry. And
then we _can't_ turn right round in the things we know every stitch
of and have bothered over from beginning to end, and just be lilies
of the field!"

"A great many people do have to wash their own dishes, and sweep,
and scour; but that is no reason it ought not to be done. I always
thought it was rather a pity that was said, _just so_," Mrs. Megilp
proceeded, with a mild deprecation of the Scripture. "There _is_
toiling and spinning; and will be to the end of time, for some of
us."

"There's cauliflower brought for dinner, Mrs. Ledwith," said
Christina, the parlor gir