Josephine Bacon Daskam

“ I looked at Connie and she caught my eye, and we both saw that that was the very thing: Mr. Angel was just made for Miss Peck! By what he said himself, as you see.
Although I think he was all right the first time, and should have said, is his buttons. The least one is: you can’t say, one are. But Connie says no, because you say three are one, when you mean the Trinity. Maybe you can disobey the rules of grammar for anything so important as the Trinity, but not for buttons, I don’t think.
Well, we told Ben about it, and of course she saw at once that it was the very thing. ”

“ And when you see how easily Beatrice and Benedick fell in love when they simply hated each other before, you will understand that it was nothing to make Miss Peck and Mr. Angell, because they didn’t hate each other at all: they just didn’t care. It was Connie who did the most of it, because she was anxious to reward Miss Peck for her kindness about the button. But it was Ben who thought up the things.
The first thing happened the next Thursday. Some of the old girls draw very well indeed, and every other week they draw some person or other, usually one of the girls, who sits on the platform. ”

“ But because a thing is hard never stopped Ben from doing it yet, and after she had thought for a while she suddenly remembered just how to manage. It was in a book of Pinky West’s. This is the part: “It was done in the good old-fashioned way, which must have been ancient before Beatrice and Benedick were dreamed of. Somebody told her that he was head over ears in love with her, and somebody told him that she was really in a sad way on his account. It is unoriginal but very practical, and its success is merely a matter of time.” ”

“ Ben was pretty scared, but she was plucky.
“I don’t mean beautiful in the common way,” she said kind of reprovingly, as if Miss Peck was very stupid not to see, “but beautiful for a picture. Mr. Angell says it’s a great mistake that the prettiest people make the prettiest pictures. He doesn’t care for them. It’s what’s in the face, he says.”
Which was all true—that Mr. Angell said it, I mean. Not that there is much sense in it, of course. ”

“ Norah said she—the other girl—wasn’t fit to be spoken to and wore a great big switch of false hair, “But what does that matter, Miss Benigna, when a man once loses his head?” she said. She wrote long letters to Charles, and he sent one of them to Norah and wrote a note that said that the woman who could write letters like that when far apart had more love in her heart than a girl that never sent him a line. And that was why Norah felt so bad, because she couldn’t write except the very plainest things, and of course, plain writing is no use in love letters. ”

“ We went to a kind of a field with a big tree in it and a brook, and lots of the girls had brought candy and things they could get into their pockets, and it was a kind of picnic, though not a good one, as there was, of course, no lemonade nor sandwiches. Still, it was better than nothing. She never noticed what we were eating. I’d like to have seen that happen with the Pie along!
He kept asking her different things about the best place to stop, and what would be the prettiest thing to draw, and a whole lot of things that didn’t make any difference anyway, because nobody did very well. ”

“ A woman’s heart, my friend, is like the summer sea—a changing surface, but an unplumbed, constant depth!” That last sentence was all out of a novel. I don’t know who by, but the cover is dark green.
Another place was, “Do you remember that last night in the conservatory? Shall I ever forget the waltz they played? You were in white”—I can’t remember any more of it, but even Ben had to admit that it was a pretty fine part. Afterwards we remembered that that was out of a letter to a girl from a man, but Ben couldn't copy it all over again, so we left it in. ”

“ It’s a pity she hasn’t the opportunity.”
Now of course that was foolishness, because nobody would want to sew on buttons all their life, even if they were as old as Miss Peck, who must have been twenty-five or thirty. But Connie knew that she was willing to sew on some buttons, because she put one on her velvet coat once when Con was in a hurry and couldn’t wait for Miss Demarest. And so she wanted to do her a kindness in turn, to balance in her book. ”