"If my Aunt Beulah could teach me as much as she does and make it as interesting as Aunt Margaret does, I think I would make her feel very proud of me," Eleanor said. "I get so nervous saving energy the way Aunt Beulah says for me to that I forget all the lesson. Aunt Margaret tells too many stories, I guess, but I like them." "Your Aunt Margaret is a child of God," Peter said devoutly, "in spite of her raw-boned, intellectual family." "Uncle David says she's a daughter of the fairies." "She's that, too. When Margaret's a year or two older you won't feel the need of a mother." "I don't now," said Eleanor; "only a father,--that I want you to be, the way you promised." "That's done," Peter said. Then he continued musingly, "You'll find Gertrude--different. I can't quite imagine her presiding over your moral welfare but I think she'll be good at it. She's a good deal of a person, you know." "Aunt Beulah's a good kind of person, too," Eleanor said; "she tries hard. The only thing is that she keeps trying to make me express myself, and I don't know what that means." "Let me see if I can tell you," said Peter. "Self-expression is a part of every man's duty. Inside we are all trying to be good and true and fine--" "Except the villains," Eleanor interposed. "People like Iago aren't trying." "Well, we'll make an exception of the villains; we're talking of people like us, pretty good people with the right instincts. Well then, if all the time we're trying to be good and true and fine, we carry about a blank face that reflects nothing of what we are feeling and thinking, the world is a little worse off, a little duller and heavier place for what is going on inside of us." "Well, how can we make it better off then?" Eleanor inquired practically. "By not thinking too much about it for one thing, except to remember to smile, by trying to be just as much at home in it as possible, by letting the kind of person we are trying to be show through on the outside. By gosh! I wish Beulah could hear me." "By just not being bashful, do you mean?" "That's the idea." "Well, when Aunt Beulah makes me do those dancing exercises, standing up in the middle of the floor and telling me to be a flower and express myself as a flower, does she just mean not to be bashful?" "Something like that: she means stop thinking of yourself and go ahead--" "But how can I go ahead with her sitting there watching?" "I suppose I ought to tell you to imagine that you had the soul of a flower, but I haven't the nerve." "You've got nerve enough to do anything," Eleanor assured him, but she meant it admiringly, and seriously. "I haven't the nerve to go on with a moral conversation in which you are getting the better of me at every turn," Peter laughed. "I'm sure it's unintentional, but you make me feel like a good deal of an ass, Eleanor." "That means a donkey, doesn't it?" "It does, and by jove, I believe that you're glad of it."