“What a pleasant room this is, Mrs. Boyd! But all the rooms are just cozy and nice. Of course Mrs. Barrington can afford to keep it in a lovely fashion for her prices are high and she doesn’t care to take any scholars only from the best families. I do wonder how that Nevins girl slipped in? Her father is a first-class banker, I have understood. They have a big house in New York and a summer house at Elberon, and their New York house is rented out for seven thousand dollars; but isn’t she a terror? How do you stand her, Miss Boyd?”
“She has had very little training. Her mother has been ill and seems very indulgent,” answered Lilian quietly. “Yet she may make a very fair scholar.”
“It’s funny to hear her talk. Bragging, we call it. Do you suppose the stories are true?”
“Mrs. Barrington would know,” was the cautious reply.
“Well, I suppose she must be satisfactory or she wouldn’t be here. But there’s common blood back of her somewhere. Money doesn’t give you the prestige of good birth. That always shows—don’t you think so?” with a confident upward glance.
“I have not had experience enough with the world to judge,” answered Lilian. “We lived in a factory town—”
“And in such places there are a good many newly rich, and they think they have it all.”
Mrs. Boyd had been straightening out the rent and basting it on a piece of stiff paper.
“I wonder if you would mind asking Mrs. Dane if there were irons on the range.”
She looked straight at Louie, not at all as if she was asking a favor. Lilian was on her knees straightening and dusting the lower shelf of the book case. She did not even turn her head.