"I don't want you to think about that fifty dollars now," said Cousin Anna, "and I don't want you to ask Robert to return it for you. Pay it when you can."
The girls came over promptly and in a bunch. They were tactful and considerate. Only Maud made any direct allusion to her friend's unhappy failure. "We all have our regrettable moments," she said largely, embracing Selina and kissing her tenderly, as Juliette and Amanthus and Adele in turn released her, "our humiliating moments, I may say, in regard to myself. The other day I told the most distinguished man, come to preach at our church and staying with us, that I always know everything written by him for The Christian Herald, by its academic touch, and then went and looked up academic in the dictionary." Generous Maud! It was her way of comforting!
"Mamma sends her love," said Amanthus, "so much love!"
"We can't be sorry we've got you back, and we hope you won't require it of us," said Judy, dear little Judy. But she looked listless and she said it without her usual animation. Did the others look at her a little anxiously, a little solicitously, perhaps, or did Selina imagine it?
"I'm such a disappointment to Mamma and Grandmamma, Selina," said Adele, "thus far in what they're pleased to call my social start. I'm the square peg in the round hole, as I see it myself. If it isn't my physical elbows that stick out, it's my mental elbows, and they get on the nerves of my family even worse. I need you at home, and badly, to be sorry for me."
Several days after this Adele came over alone. "Come go back with me for dinner, Selina," she begged. "I haven't really seen you yet, and I've so missed having you to talk to. As I told you the other day, I'm such a disappointment to Mamma and Grandmamma. Why can't they let me alone? Why can't I be myself in my own way? Neither of my brothers was any older than I am now, when they were allowed to choose and follow their ways, Roswell to Tech, and Jim out West with our uncle in business."
As Selina, consenting, went to change her dress, she was thinking that even with no interference, it wasn't the simple matter to be one's self that Adele seemed to imply. For her own part she seemed to be the victim of interchangeable selves right now that arranged the matter of possession between them, with no respect at all for her wishes, the result being a sort of see-saw in her personality, up or down, buoyant or depressed, confident or deprecatory, according to the self in predominance at the moment.
The buoyant self right now since her return home, seemed born of a knowledge she felt almost guilty about admitting; she was prettier. She was the last person who ought to recognize it Mamma and Auntie would tell her if they suspected her of doing so, and she therefore would keep any show that she was conscious of it hidden. But the fact was there. She saw it in the eyes of her mother and aunt themselves; in the puzzled gazes of Maud and Juliette and Amanthus; in an unwilling admission from the eyes of Culpepper, who was bluntly opposed always to anybody or anything flattering her; in quick comprehension and acknowledgment in the glances of Adele.
Was Marcus right? Had her brief glimpse into life, her short temporary dependence upon herself, done it?
The knowledge of it, whatever the explanation, gave her new confidence and sudden brave carriage. Her color deepened and despite her cruel disappointment, which yet stung sharply, her eyes laughed and her step was tripping and light. The second day that she was home, she met a former acquaintance down street, Mr. Tuttle Jones, that paragon of correctness, and he stopped at her bow, a thing he never had done before, and with his eyes upon her face, shook hands and passed some of the gratifying nothings of pleasant interchange with her.