“Tell them! My dear, not for worlds!” said Flossie, as they started down the steps on their way to find the others of their set and impart to them how “perfectly awful the Grahams’ cousin was.”
Jan had wandered into the rear parlor when her first visitors had left her, and so had not heard the remarks to Gladys, which had been perfectly audible to Gwen.
When she got her sister up-stairs that young lady freed her mind.
“Gladys Graham,” she said, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself not to stand up for your own cousin, and not to have any more self-respect than to let those geese be impertinent to her and to us in our own house! Jan didn’t do anything dreadful. She needn’t have said that about the clothes, I’ll admit, but I suppose she was disgusted, and well she might be. Besides, she’s the kind of girl that can’t help seeing the funny side, but she isn’t one bit mean. Those girls acted as if she were as far below them—as far as the sea-level from Mont Blanc. And I only wish I could have boxed their ears. If you don’t stop letting those Hammonds and Floss and that crowd impose on you, you’ll be a goose all your days. Just you wait and see if you don’t find out I’m right. I am just ashamed of you—helping them sit on papa’s sister’s daughter!”
Gladys flared up. “She’s perfectly disgraceful, that’s what Janet Howe is! Saying she was too poor to go to the theater, and took in clothes! I wonder she didn’t say she took in washing! Maybe they do, and the ladies give her their old clothes,” she cried.
“Gladys, stop this instant! I won’t let you talk that way. Jan’s a trump, and I can see it if I do neglect her. I only wish we were as nice as they all must be,” cried Gwen.
“Well, if you like that sort of girl, you may have her. I won’t take her out, and I won’t go anywhere with her, and I think papa is downright mean to impair her on us,” Gladys sobbed.
“If you mean impose, why don’t you say so? I honestly think we are the ones whom Jan impairs,” said Gwen, restored to good-nature by the chance to correct one of Gladys’s many slips of tongue. And thus ended Jan’s introduction to New York society.