"Alice's kimono is flannel and so is mine," she explained in answer to the protest. "You never met Grandma Macklin, did you, Betty?"
"No-o, I'm sure I never did," responded Betty thoughtfully. "Does she live with you?"
"Yes. But while you were at the Peabodys she was visiting her half-sister in Georgia," explained Norma. "She is mother's mother, you know."
"What was it Mrs. Eustice said about her?" questioned Betty with interest. "Did she live near here? Was that when your mother went to this school?"
"It was a day school then, you know," put in the laconic Alice.
"Yes, and grandma lived in a perfectly wonderful big house," said Norma.
"It must be fully five miles from here. Uncle Goliath, an old colored
man, used to drive her over every day and call for her in the afternoon.
Mother has always been determined Alice and I should graduate from
Shadyside."
"Well then, it's lovely she is to have her wish," commented Betty brightly.
"Oh, goodness, I don't see that we're ever going to have four years," confessed Norma. "If you knew what they've given up at home to send us for this term! And though we wouldn't say anything, mother and grandma worked so hard to get us ready, Alice and I are positively ashamed of our clothes. You see, Betty, I think when you're poor, you ought to go where you'll meet other poor girls. Alice and I ought to have entered the Glenside high school, I think. But when I said something like that to dad he said it would break mother's heart. But if she knew how hard it was to be poor and to have to rub elbows with girls who have everything—"
"I don't think you ought to feel that way," urged Betty. "You have something that no amount of money could buy for you, and no lack can take away—birth and breeding. And the training your mother wants you to have is worth sacrificing other things for. Ever since I heard Mrs. Eustice talk I feel that I know what makes her school really successful."
A soft tap fell on the door.