“I suppose, like other fools, I do, but I shouldn’t; they’re weakening to the character, they breed self-conceit, develop an inflated ego. Of all insufferable people, conceited ones are the worst. I’ve known some, a good many, too, who always set the highest value upon their own performances, but never valued what others did for them; placed their own affairs in the limelight, and never in the least appreciated what others did, in fact underrated the good deeds of others and vaunted their own.”
“One does like to be encouraged. I’m afraid I do need encouragement.”
“Ah, but encouragement is a different thing from vain compliments.”
“Didn’t your mother compliment you and commend you for things when you did them well?”
Miss Rindy was silent a moment and a grim look passed over her face. “No, I can’t say that she did. My brother was always the favorite. She expected everything of me, but I can’t say that I was fed up on compliments.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother. Is he living?”
“Yes, married and living in Seattle.”
“Oh.” Ellen wondered why she had never heard of him.
“My mother was an invalid for many years,” Miss Rindy went on. “She doted on Albert from the time he was a baby, for he was a very pretty child, and I wasn’t. He was gentle and good-natured, which I was not. Poor Mother adored beauty. She was romantic and sentimental. Her eldest child, my sister Cora, was a beauty and Mother was very proud of her, but she died when she was sixteen, and then plain little Rindy was the one that was left. I don’t think my mother ever got over the fact that the beauty was taken and the plain one left, so she poured out all her affection and pride upon Albert, spoiled him utterly.”
She paused, but Ellen saw a look upon her face which made her go over to her cousin and put her arms around her. “You dear, you dear,” she murmured. “You are perfectly beautiful to me, and I know you were to all those boys overseas that you did so much for.”