"Oh, anybody can tell that she's a poor relation—isn't she, Brenda? Just see how plainly she dresses, and working so to get into college. I think that your mother and father are very good to give her a home."
Now all this was very presumptuous on Belle's part, but she spoke so pleasantly and smiled so sweetly at Brenda as she talked that the latter, though a little irritated, never thought of taking offence at her. But Belle's words had sunk deeper even than she had intended. Brenda had a certain kind of pride which was easily touched. She felt that in some way it was a source of discredit to her to have a cousin who might be a teacher. For in what other way could she interpret Julia's intention of studying Greek.
Julia, unconscious of Brenda's feeling, went on quietly without heeding the disagreeable little remarks that sometimes were made in her hearing by Brenda. Belle was as polite and agreeable toward Julia as to others whom she liked better. For it was a kind of unspoken policy of Belle's to be apparently friendly with all girls of whom she was likely to see much. If accused of this failing she would not have admitted that she was two-faced. She merely liked to be popular, and if she sometimes made ill-natured remarks about a third person, she trusted to the discretion of those to whom she talked. She did not realize that in time she might come to be regarded as thoroughly insincere. She had not measured the relative advantages of "To Be" and "To Seem."
VII
VISITING MANUEL
Two or three weeks after their adventure with Manuel passed before Brenda and Nora were able to visit him. They talked several times of going, but something always interfered. Sometimes it was the weather, sometimes it was another engagement, more often they could not go because they had no one to accompany them. For it was evident that two young girls could not go alone to the North End. At length one morning one of the under teachers in the school offered to go with them that very afternoon. She had overheard them at recess expressing their sorrow that they could not go alone.
"Really," pouted Brenda, "I think that mamma is very mean. We could go as well as not by ourselves, and why we should have to wait for her or some older person to go with us I cannot see."
"Don't call your mother mean," Miss South said laughingly in passing, and then as Brenda explained the cause of her rather undutiful expression, she had added, "Your mother is perfectly right. It would never do for you to go alone. But I have an errand down near Prince Street this very day. If you get Mrs. Barlow's permission I shall be happy to have you go with me." So it happened that one warm, sunny day in early November, the girls and Miss South exchanged their Back Bay car at Scollay Square for a Hanover Street electric car. It whizzed swiftly down a street which neither Brenda nor Nora had ever seen before, filled with gay shops whose windows were bright with millinery or jewelry—or, I am sorry to say it—bottles of liquor, amber and red. There was more display here than in the streets up town.
"Sometimes," said Miss South, "I call this the Bowery of Boston. It is the chief shopping street of the North End, and on Saturday nights the poor people do most of their buying. I came here one evening with my brother. It was really very amusing."