What they did then, was to pray about it again; for these people believed in prayer.
The next day Mrs. Eberstein had invited an acquaintance to come to dinner. This acquaintance had a daughter, also about to enter Mrs.
Delancy's school; and Mrs. Eberstein's object was to let the two girls become a little known to each other, so that Dolly in the new world she was about to enter might not feel everything utterly strange. Mrs.
Thayer belonged to a good New York family; and it likewise suited her purposes to have her daughter received in so unexceptionable a house as Mrs. Eberstein's, albeit the young lady was not without other Philadelphia friends. So the party fitted together very harmoniously.
Mrs. Thayer, in spite of her good connections, was no more than a commonplace personage. Christina, her daughter, on the other hand, showed tokens of becoming a great beauty. A little older than Dolly, of larger build and more flesh and blood development generally, and with one of those peach-blossom complexions which for fairness and delicacy almost rival the flower. Her hair was pretty, her features also pretty, her expression placid. Mrs. Eberstein was much struck.
"They are just about of an age," remarked Mrs. Thayer. "I suppose they will study the same things. Everybody studies the same things. Well, I hope you'll be friends and not rivals, my dears."
"Dolly will not be rivals with anybody," returned Dolly's aunt.
"She don't look very strong. I should think it would not do for her to study too hard," said the other lady. "Oh, rivalry is necessary, you know, to bring out the spirit of boys and girls and make them work. It may be friendly rivalry; but if they were not rivals they would not be anything; might as well not be school girls, or school boys. They would not do any work but what they liked, and we know what that would amount to. I don't know about beating learning into boys; some people say that is the way; but with girls you can't take that way; and all you have to fall back upon is emulation."
"Very few young people will study for the love of it," Mrs. Eberstein so far assented.
"They might, I believe, if the right way was taken," Mr. Eberstein remarked.
"Emulation will do it, if a girl has any spirit," said Mrs. Thayer.
"What sort of spirit?"
"What sort of spirit! Why, the spirit not to let themselves be outdone; to stand as high as anybody, and higher; be No. 1, and carry off the first honours. A spirited girl don't like to be No. 2. Christina will never be No. 2."
"Is it quite certain that such a spirit is the one to be cultivated?"
"It makes them study,"--said Mrs. Thayer, looking at her questioner to see what he meant.
"What do you think the Bible means, when it tells us not to seek for honour?"
"_Not_ to seek for honour?" repeated the lady.
"Not the honour that comes from man."
"I didn't know it forbade it. I never heard that it was forbidden. Why, Mr. Eberstein, it is _natural_ to wish for honour. Everybody wishes for it."
"So they do," Mr. Eberstein assented. "I might say, so _we_ do."
"It is natural," repeated the lady.
"Its being natural does not prove it to be right."
"Why, Mr. Eberstein, if it is _natural_, we cannot help it."
"How then does trying to be No. 1 agree with the love that 'seeketh not her own'?"
Dolly was listening earnestly, Mr. Eberstein saw. Mrs. Thayer hesitated, in some inward disgust.
"Do you take that literally?" she said then. "How can you take it literally? You cannot."
"But Christ pleased not Himself."
"Well, but He was not like us."
"We are bidden to be like him, though."
"Oh, as far as we can. But you cannot press those words literally, Mr.
Eberstein."
"As far as we can? I _must_ press them, for the Bible does. I ask no more, and the Lord demands no more, than that we be like our Master _as far as we can_. And He 'pleased not himself,' and 'received not honour from men.'"
"If you were to preach such doctrine in schools, I am afraid you would have very bad recitations."
"Well!" said Mr. Eberstein. "Better bad recitations than bad hearts.
Though really there is no necessary connection between my premises and your conclusion. The Bible reckons 'emulations,' Mrs. Thayer, in the list of the worst things human nature knows, and does."
"Then you would have a set of dunces. I should just like to be told, Mr. Eberstein, how on that principle you would get young people to study. In the case of girls you cannot do it by beating; nor in the case of boys, after they have got beyond being little boys. Then emulation comes in, and they work like beavers to get the start of one another. And so we have honours, and prizes, and distinctions. Take all that away, and how would you do, Mr. Eberstein?"
Mr. Eberstein was looking fondly into a pair of young eyes that were fixedly gazing at him. So looking, he spoke,
"There is another sort of '_Well done!_' which I would like my Dolly and Miss Christina to try for. If they are in earnest in trying for that, they will study!" said Mr. Eberstein.
Mrs. Thayer thought, apparently, that it was no use talking on the subject with a visionary man; and she turned to something else. The party left the dinner-table, and Dolly took her new acquaintance upstairs to show her the treasure contained in Mrs. Eberstein's old bookcase.
"Mr. Eberstein is rather a strange man, isn't he?" said Miss Christina on the way.
"No," said Dolly. "I don't think he is. What makes you say so?"
"I never heard any one talk like that before."
"Perhaps," said Dolly, stopping short on the landing place and looking at her companion. Then she seemed to change her manner of attack. "Who do you want to please most?" she said.
"With my studies? Why, mamma, of course."
"I would rather please the Lord Jesus," said Dolly.
"But I was talking about _school work_," retorted the other. "You don't suppose _He_ cares about our lessons?"
"I guess He does," said Dolly. They were still standing on the landing place, looking into each other's eyes.
"But that's impossible. Think!--French lessons, and English lessons, and music and dancing, and all of it. That couldn't be, you know."
"Do you love Jesus?" said Dolly.
"Love him? I do not know," said Christina colouring. "I am a member of the church, if that is what you mean."
Dolly began slowly to go up the remaining stairs. "I think we ought to study to please Him," she said.
"I don't see how it should please him," said the other a little out of humour. "I don't see how He should care about such little things."
"Why not?" said Dolly. "If your mother cares, and my mother cares.