e to you, Sally?" said Mara. "I wish it would to me.
Just see what a beautiful clear color that flower is. All I can do, I
can't make one like it. My scarlet and yellows sink dead into the
paper."

"Why, I think your flowers are wonderful! You are a real genius, that's
what you are! I am only a common girl; I can't do things as you can."

"You can do things a thousand times more useful, Sally. I don't pretend
to compare with you in the useful arts, and I am only a bungler in
ornamental ones. Sally, I feel like a useless little creature. If I
could go round as you can, and do business, and make bargains, and push
ahead in the world, I should feel that I was good for something; but
somehow I can't."

"To be sure you can't," said Sally, laughing. "I should like to see you
try it."

"Now," pursued Mara, in a tone of lamentation, "I could no more get into
a carriage and drive to Brunswick as you can, than I could fly. I can't
drive, Sally--something is the matter with me; and the horses always
know it the minute I take the reins; they always twitch their ears and
stare round into the chaise at me, as much as to say, 'What! you there?'
and I feel sure they never will mind me. And then how you can make those
wonderful bargains you do, I can't see!--you talk up to the clerks and
the men, and somehow you talk everybody round; but as for me, if I only
open my mouth in the humblest way to dispute the price, everybody puts
me down. I always tremble when I go into a store, and people talk to me
just as if I was a little girl, and once or twice they have made me buy
things that I knew I didn't want, just because they will talk me down."

"Oh, Mara, Mara," said Sally, laughing till the tears rolled down her
cheeks, "what do _you_ ever go a-shopping for?--of course you ought
always to send me. Why, look at this dress--real India chintz; do you
know I made old Pennywhistle's clerk up in Brunswick give it to me just
for the price of common cotton? You see there was a yard of it had got
faded by lying in the shop-window, and there were one or two holes and
imperfections in it, and you ought to have heard the talk I made! I
abused it to right and left, and actually at last I brought the poor
wretch to believe that he ought to be grateful to me for taking it off
his hands. Well, you see the dress I've made of it. The imperfections
didn't hurt it the least in the world as I managed it,--and the faded
breadth makes a good apron, so you s