“Well, that’s all you know about it, Natalie,” declared Beth earnestly. “I dislike lots of things and lots of people. But you don’t have anything or any one here I can dislike. Aunt Rebecca says it uses up a lot of valuable strength to dislike. She says it’s better to go around the object you dislike, and try not to see it, than it is to go around disliking it. What she means is to dislike anything once for all and drop it. Aunt Rebecca is a lady who never feels half-way, I think. You know what it says in the Bible about lukewarmness? Well, Aunt Rebecca won’t ever have that text to think about on the last day.” Natalie’s laughter rang out so heartily that it brought Alys running to hear the joke. “I’d have to repeat the whole speech, and then it wouldn’t be the same,” sighed Natalie, not trying to explain. “Beth is so much in earnest and is such an old-fashioned little thing! Bethie, I don’t believe you were born eleven years ago! You’re exactly like a little piece of old flowered silk, or one of those samplers, or a cup of sprigged china that you see in old colonial collections!” cried Natalie with an inspiration. “Kind of faded and musty?” suggested Beth with a twinkle. “Besides, you don’t have to go to colonial collections to see them, Natalie. We have them at home. Aunt Rebecca has my great-great-great-grandmother Bristead’s sampler. It has pine trees, baskets of flowers, two kinds of alphabets and the text about serving the Lord in your youth worked on it. She signed it, working, you know: Amelia Elizabeth Barlow. She married great-great-great-grandfather Bristead afterward, of course. And there is almost all of a sprigged china tea set in our house.” Alys stared. “Isn’t your great-aunt who brought you up, Beth, quite poor?” she asked. Natalie frowned and blushed, but Beth was unconscious of offense.