She agreed heartily with two of my epithets, and took me up on the third:—
"Nothing is 'unbearable,' Namesake, except the thought of our own folly or sin. Still, this is a part of the discipline of life I would spare you, if I could. Endure hardness as a good soldier, and shame their want of breeding by the perfection of yours. An unmannerly schoolgirl is the cruellest of tormentors, and"—with a ring of her voice and a snap of her eyes that were refreshing and characteristic—"I should like to have the handling of that crew for an hour or two!"
I snuggled up close to her, already measurably consoled, and ready as usual, with one of the speeches that stamped me as "old-fashioned."
"We are like two wild pigeons, tied by the foot, in a yard full of peacocks. I would rather be a pigeon than a peacock. But pecks and struts and screamings are not agreeable, for all that."
Nor was it agreeable to be the only girls in our class-room who were not invited to a party given the middle of November, by one of the nicest of our new acquaintances. She had been quite friendly with us, and the very day the invitations were sent out, laid a sprig of citronaloes silently on my lap, during a French lesson. The smile that went with the scented leaves was sweeter still, and made my heart and face glow. When we were getting our wraps and bonnets in the cloak-room, at the close of the afternoon session, I edged nearer and nearer to her, pretending to hunt for my overshoes, meaning to say a word of thanks as soon as the group about her thinned. I got so near to her that I caught what she was saying in a low voice to her intimates:—
"I just hated not to invite the Burwells, but they do look so countryfied! like little old women cut short after they were made. And I don't believe either of them has a party dress to her name. They would be a pair of sights in a roomful of well-dressed people."
I slipped away with a barbed arrow in my self-love, and a hard, resentful pain at my heart, on my mother's account. Fierce tears scalded the inside of my eyelids as I recalled her weeks of loving preparation for our school life, the thousand of stitches set by her dear hands, the gentle smile of satisfaction with which she had surveyed our finished wardrobe. When I was in my own room at Cousin Molly's, I hugged and kissed and cried over the slatted hood, vowing vengefully to study so hard, and to rise so fast in my classes, and to acquit myself so nobly in the sight of my teachers, as to compel the admiration of the proud who rose up against me, and who compassed me about like bees. David's "cussing psalms" came readily and forcibly to my help in the hour of bitter humiliation.
If my wrath was unhallowed, it wrought the peaceable fruits of righteousness. The barb had gone too deep to be uncovered even to Cousin Molly Belle, but the hurt made a student of me. Giving up all thought of popularity and polish, I devoted myself to my school work with assiduity that threatened injury to my health before the half-term was over. But for my best and most clear-sighted of cousins I might have become a misanthropic invalid.
On the very day of the now hateful party, she took us for a long drive,—the whole length of Main Street, the sidewalks of which were thronged with promenaders and shoppers. She stopped the carriage—a handsome equipage, with a smart coachman and two spanking grays—at Samanni's and bought us a whole pound, apiece, of delicious candy, and treated us to Albemarle pippins to take home with us, and ice-cream eaten on the spot. Next, we went to Drinker and Morris's, the fashionable bookstore, and she told us to pick out, each for herself, the books we would like best to have. Mary 'Liza chose The School-girl in France, and I, The Scottish Chiefs. (I have it to this day.) We finished our excursion by a visit to St. John's Church and burying-ground. Cousin Molly Belle's grandfather had heard Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech, and she made the scene very plain to us as we strolled along the dim aisles, streaked with flaming bars of sunset, striking through the western window upon the very spot where the great orator had stood.
By the time I had finished my supper, and was settled before the fire with my book, the memories of my jaunt making glad my whole being, I had clean forgotten party and slight, and did not care a fig—for that one night—if I was countryfied and had not a party dress to my name. The real things were mine,—home-loves and the world of books and imagination,—possessions which the scorning of those who were at ease, and the contempt of the proud could not molest or take away.