Now Electra Sanderson was distinctly of the nouveau riche. She came from an eastern city where money is the god of things. Why her father, a kindly soul who had risen from hod carrier to contractor, happened to choose Leslie Manor for his youngest daughter must remain one of the unanswered questions. Perhaps “mommer” made the selection on account of the name which had appealed to her. Manors or manners were all one to her. At any rate, Electra (christened Ellen) was a pupil at Miss Woodhull’s very select school. A big, good-natured, warm-hearted, generous, dull slouchy girl of seventeen, who never could and never would “change her spots,” but was inevitably destined to marry someone of her own class, rear a flourishing family and settle down into a commonplace, good-natured matron, Leslie Manor nevertheless, and notwithstanding. Miss Woodhull and her staff might polish until exhausted. The only result would be the removal of the plating and the exposure of the alloy beneath.
Electra didn’t care a whoop for the old fogies who had lived and ruled in England generations before she was born. Indeed, she would not have wept had England and all the histories ever written about her disappeared beneath the sea which surrounded that country. What she wanted now was to get out of that classroom and into the dining room visible from the window near which she was sitting, and through which she gazed longingly, for there could be found something tangible. Her thoughts had been in the dining room for the past five minutes, consequently she was not aware that Sally had surreptitiously reached toward her from the seat behind, laid hold of about eighteen inches of the lacing of her Peter Thomson (dangling as usual) and while Petty Gaylord, sitting next Sally, was secretly reading a letter concealed behind her book, had made fast Electra’s Peter Thomson lacing to Petty’s boot lacing, likewise adrift, and then soberly awaited developments.
Sally could manage to do more things unobserved than any other girl in the school, though she had found a fair rival in Beverly.
Thus lay the train “of things as they ought (not) to be” when Miss Baylis fired her first shot at poor Electra.
“Electra suppose you return to this world of facts,—you seem to be in dreamland at present—and tell me who brought a rather unpleasant notoriety upon himself at this period.”
Electra returned to England and English affairs at a bound. But to which period was Miss Baylis referring? Electra had not the ghost of an idea but would make a stab at it any way.
“Why-er-oh, it was-er-the man who made extensive use of bricks in the House of Commons,” she ventured at random.
“What?” demanded Miss Baylis, utterly bewildered.
“Yes, ma’am. I mean yes, Miss Baylis. I can’t remember his name but he did. I learned that by heart last night at study period,” staunchly asserted Electra, sure for once in her life of her point, for hadn’t she read those very words?
“Of ‘bricks’?” repeated Miss Baylis.