"Well, to be sure," said Mrs. Fairfield, who always endeavored to fill up pauses in conversation,—"to be sure, Ridgemont is improving. Don't you find it changed a good deal?"
"Why, not very much," Horton answered. "Places don't change so much in a few years as people. I met Lilly O'Connell as I came into your grounds. She has changed—wonderfully."
"Y-yes," said Mrs. Fairfield, rather stiffly. "She has improved. Since her father died, she has lived in Parson Townsend's family. She is a very respectable girl, and an excellent seamstress."
Florence had gone to the window, and was looking out.
"She was very good at her books, I remember," he went on. "I used to think she would make something more than a seamstress."
"I only remember her dreadful temper," said Florence, in a tone meant to sound careless. "We called her 'Tiger-Lily,' you know."
"I never wondered at her temper," said Horton. "She had a great deal to vex her. I suppose things are not much better now."
"Oh, she is treated well enough," said Mrs. Fairfield. "The best families in the place employ her. I don't know what more she can expect, considering that she is—a——"
"Off color," suggested Horton. "No. She cannot expect much more. But it is terrible—isn't it?—that stigma for no fault of hers. It must be hard for a girl like her—like what she seems to have become."