She hesitated.
“Go on, dear,” said I. “What’s the trouble?”
“Oh, it’s always the same thing,” she sighed, with a grown-up air that was both humorous and pathetic. “Some of the girls are down on me—about—about social position. You see, we don’t go socially with their families.”
“Why should we?” said I. “We don’t know them nor they us. Naturally, they don’t care anything about us, nor we about them.”
She hung her head. “But I want to go with them,” said she doggedly.
“Why?” said I.
“Because—because—it’s the proper thing to do. If you don’t go with them everybody looks down on you.” She lifted her head, and her flashing eyes reminded me of her mother. “It makes me just wild to be looked down on.”
“I should say so,” said I. “Those little girls at Miss Ryper’s must be an ill-bred lot. We must take you away from there and put you in a school with nice girls.”
“Oh, no, father!” she cried in a panic. “Those girls are the nicest—the only nice girls in any school in New York. All the other schools look up to ours. I’d cry my eyes out in any other school.”
“Why?” said I.