“I wonder why that girl doesn’t bring my skirt. Maybe they’ve spoiled it.”
“Have you sent a maid?”
“Why no. I meant Miss Boyd. She oughtn’t be above such things.”
“Still, she isn’t here to run on errands. I think Mrs. Barrington treats her quite as if she were a scholar, and she’s a fine one, too.”
“Some day she’ll brag of having been educated here, though Mount Morris doesn’t set out to furnish teachers, but the training of young ladies. Mother likes it because there was no opportunity of making undesirable acquaintances,” and Louie gave her head a toss.
“Is Miss Nevins so very desirable?” asked Zay with a flash of mirth in her eye.
“Still, if you met her abroad as a rich banker’s daughter or heard of her being presented to the Queen—”
“Girls, don’t quarrel about either one of them. Alice Nevins is a fool and always will be. Lilian Boyd is smart and ambitious but there is the bar sinister. Her mother isn’t the sort of person to come up in the world and when Miss Lilian gets there she’ll ship off her old mother, put her in an Old Woman’s Home. I despise that toss of her head, just as if she was up to the highest mark already; but they are not worth disputing about.”
Zaidee Crawford drew a long breath. She had almost courage enough to stand up for her, then she remembered some one had said you were never sure that some disgraceful thing might come out. Who knew anything about her father? There was a good deal of pride of birth at Mount Morris as is apt to be the case where well to do people have lived for a century or so.
Louie sent a maid for her skirt and admitted that a tailor couldn’t have done it better.