“Ruth,” exclaimed Julia, with a shade of reproach, “you have changed very much the past year. You used to think Belle’s exclusiveness silly, but you are tending that way yourself.”
“You are not in earnest!”
“Of course, you’ll never be just like Belle. But you have begun to think too much about appearances.”
“But you are too amiable, Julia. As we can’t be intimate with all the girls we meet, we might as well choose the most congenial. We can’t let all kinds of girls take up our time.”
“My time isn’t so valuable. I can spare a little even to all kinds of girls.”
“Yes, but even on Mondays, sometimes, there are such queer girls. They make an unfavorable impression on people from town who call. Don’t you remember when Mrs. Blair came out? Now, if she had only met Annabel Harmon or Elizabeth Darcy, how different it would have been!”
“Annabel Harmon!” Julia wondered why she so disliked Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel, for Annabel was a popular girl, hardly less so than Elizabeth Darcy. She was well-bred and interesting. “I never can thoroughly trust any one who spends her spare time reading French books,” Clarissa had said laughingly, although Julia would have hesitated to put it quite so definitely.
Ruth, however, was apparently fascinated by Annabel, and constantly quoted her with admiration. Annabel had a dislike for plain things and plain people. By this, she was careful to explain, she did not mean necessarily things that were ugly or people who were poor. “Some ugly things are really very beautiful, and some poor people are far from plain. The only kind of plainness that I object to is commonness; I hate ordinary things.”
Yet if any one had taken the trouble to note down the things that Annabel called “common,” it would have been found that in her eyes these were the inexpensive things, and the girls whom she described as ordinary were usually those who were not rich either in money or influential connections.
Julia saw that Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel had made a change in her, not altogether to be commended.