‘If you are really attached to her, Laura, don’t make the mistake of admiring her faults of character, but try to find her better qualities, and help her to develop them. It is a fatal thing when girls of your age set up these false standards, and order their lives by them. There are worse things than school-teaching, yes, or even floor-scrubbing or window-washing. Lovely tea-gowns and silver-backed brushes are all very pretty and nice to have, if they are not gained at the sacrifice of something better. I should have said to my daughter, had I been Mrs. Denton, “We will work for each other, my darling, and try to do whatever God gives us to do; but, no matter how hard life is, your heart is the most precious thing in the world, and you must never sell that, if we part with everything else.” Oh, my girls, my girls, if I could only make you believe that “poor and content is rich, and rich enough.” I cannot bear to think of your growing year by year into the conviction that these pretty glittering things of wealth are the true gold of life which everybody seeks. Forgive me, Laura, if I have hurt your feelings.’ ‘I know you would never hurt anybody’s feelings, if you could help it, Mrs. Winship,’ Laura answered, with a hint of coldness in her voice, ‘though I can’t help thinking that you are a little hard on poor Jessie; but, even then, one can surely like a person without wishing to do the very same things she does.’ ‘Yes, that is true,’ said Mrs. Winship, gravely. ‘But one cannot constantly justify a wrong action in another without having one’s own standard unconsciously lowered. What we continually excuse in other people we should be inclined by and by to excuse in ourselves. Let us choose our friends as wisely as possible, and love them dearly, helping them to grow worthier of our love at the same time we are trying to grow worthier of theirs; because “we live by admiration, hope, and love,” you know, but not by admiring and loving the wrong things. ‘But there is the horn, and I hear the boys. Let us come to luncheon, and tell our good news of Elsie.’ [Picture: Music score and words: With incredible energy. The horn! The horn! The lus-ty, lus-ty horn! ’Tis not a thing to laugh to scorn, A thing to laugh to scorn!] Long before the boys appeared in sight, their voices rang through the cañon in a chorus that woke the echoes, and presently they came into view, bearing two quarters and a saddle of freshly killed mutton, hanging from a leafy branch swung between Jack’s sturdy shoulder and Geoff’s. ‘A splendid “still hunt” this morning, Aunt Truth!’ exclaimed Jack. ‘Game plenty and not too shy, dogs in prime condition, hunters ditto. Behold the result!’