out to me looked exactly like an angel flying along the pale, shining sky and carrying a baby in its arms. There was a filmy blue veil over its head with a faint, first star gleaming through it. Its wings were tipped with gold and its white robe flecked with crimson.
“‘There goes the Angel of the Evening Star with tomorrow in its arms,’ said Dean.
“It was so beautiful that it gave me one of my wonder moments. But ten seconds later it had changed into something that looked like a camel with an exaggerated hump!
“We had a wonderful half hour, even if Mrs. Price, who couldn’t see anything in the sky, did think us quite mad.
“Well, it all comes to this, there’s no use trying to live in other people’s opinions. The only thing to do is to live in your own. After all, I believe in myself. I’m not so bad and silly as they think me, and I’m not consumptive, and I can write. Now that I’ve written it all out I feel differently about it. The only thing that still aggravates me is that Miss Potter pitied me—pitied by a Potter!
“I looked out of my window just now and saw Cousin Jimmy’s nasturtium bed—and suddenly the flash came—and Miss Potter and her pity, and her malicious tongue seemed to matter not at all. Nasturtiums, who colored you, you wonderful, glowing things? You must have been fashioned out of summer sunsets.
“I help Cousin Jimmy a great deal with his garden this summer. I think I love it as much as he does. Every day we make new discoveries of bud and bloom.
“So Aunt Elizabeth won’t send me to Shrewsbury! Oh, I feel as disappointed as if I’d really hoped she would. Every door in life seems shut to me.
“Still, after all, I’ve lots to be thankful for. Aunt Elizabeth will let me go to school another year here, I think, and Mr. Carpenter can teach me heaps yet; I’m not hideous; moonlight is still a fair thing; I’m going to do something with my pen some day—and I’ve got a lovely, grey, moon-faced cat who has just jumped up on my table
