“There are my fig-leaves,—­some of them; and here are more.”  She turned, with a quick movement, to her wardrobe; pulled out and uncovered a bonnet-box which held a dainty headgear of the new spring fashion, and then took down from a hook and tossed upon it a silken garment that fluttered with fresh ribbons.  “How much of this outside business is right, and how much wrong, I should be glad to know?  It all takes time and thoughts; and those are life.  How much life must go into the leaves?  That’s what puzzles me.  I can’t do without the things; and I can’t be let to take ‘clear comfort’ in them, as grandma says, either.”  She was on the floor, now, beside her little fineries; her hands clasped together about one knee, and her face turned up to Cousin Delight’s.  She looked as if she half believed herself to be ill-used.

“And clothes are but the first want,—­the primitive fig-leaves; the world is full of other outside business,—­as much outside as these,” pursued Miss Goldthwaite, thoughtfully.

“Everything is outside,” said Leslie.  “Learning, and behaving, and going, and doing, and seeing, and hearing, and having.  ’It’s all a muddle,’ as the poor man says in ‘Hard Times.’”

“I don’t think I can do without the parable,” said Cousin Delight.  “The real inward principle of the tree—­that which corresponds to thought and purpose in the soul—­urges always to the finishing of its life in the fruit.  The leaves are only by the way,—­an outgrowth of the same vitality, and a process toward the end; but never, in any living thing, the end itself.”

“Um,” said Leslie, in her nonchalant fashion again; her chin between her two hands now, and her head making little appreciative nods.  “That’s like condensed milk; a great deal in a little of it.  I’ll put the fig-leaves away now, and think it over.”

But, as she sprang up, and came round behind Miss Goldthwaite’s chair, she stopped and gave her a little kiss on the top of her head.  If Cousin Delight had seen, there was a bright softness in the eyes, which told of feeling, and of gladness that welcomed the quick touch of truth.

Miss Goldthwaite knew one good thing,—­when she had driven her nail.  “She never hammered in the head with a punch, like a carpenter,” Leslie said of her.  She believed that, in moral tool-craft, that finishing implement belonged properly to the hand of an after-workman.

CHAPTER II.

WAYSIDE GLIMPSES

I have mentioned one little theory, relating solely to domestic thrift, which guided Mrs. Goldthwaite in her arrangements for her daughter.  I believe that, with this exception, she brought up her family very nearly without any theory whatever.  She did it very much on the taking-for-granted system.  She took for granted that her children were born with the same natural perceptions as herself; that they could recognize, little by little, as they grew into