"Because she has no business here, because she degrades the school. A bankrupt's daughter ought not to come here," said Julia haughtily, "and I hope you will not associate with her."
Ruth's eyes were flashing and her cheeks crimson as she retorted angrily, "That is no reason why I should not be friendly with her; and indeed, Julia, I do not intend to ask you whom I am to choose for my friends."
"Do as you like, and go your own way," said Julia with a scornful laugh. "Mabel must be destitute of all fine feeling, but perhaps you have a fancy for people of that sort. If any one belonging to me had ever been a bankrupt, I should never show my face in the town again."
She left the house a moment later with one or two of her chosen friends, and Ruth was slowly walking home alone, trying to swallow her indignation, and letting the cool breeze fan her hot cheeks, when Ethel Thompson overtook her.
"I really think," she began, "that Julia has been terribly down on Mabel, and I am glad that you took her part and would not give in. Our coolness to her to-day was all Julia's doing, and I know that she is wild with you, for she cannot bear to be crossed. But Mabel has not done anything; and after all, I don't see why we should cut her to please Julia, who wants to dictate to every one."
Ruth made an indifferent reply, and hastened to change the subject, for she did not care to discuss her cousin's shortcomings with one whom she knew but slightly.
Very few words passed between the cousins upon their return home that evening; but on their way to school the next morning Julia asked scornfully, "Do you still intend to cultivate your aristocratic acquaintance, Ruth?"
"I shall do as I please," said the other shortly.
The girls at Miss Elgin's were mostly the children of wealthy parents, but unhappily many of them, though rich and fashionable, were sadly lacking in refinement of heart and mind. Money was the god revered and worshipped in most of their homes, the one thing talked of and held in honour, and it was not surprising that the girls, from constantly hearing their neighbours' worth reckoned solely by the amount of money they possessed, had come to regard it as the chief good, and to consider the want of it as something like a crime. Julia had been reared in a somewhat different atmosphere, but she had adopted the tone of her school-fellows, and even surpassed them in scorn and disdain for those who were poor or unfortunate.
But she was about to meet with a terrible humiliation.