Here the last of the Glenalvans—once a proud and wealthy race—dwelt in respectable, shabby-genteel poverty.
But poverty did not seem to have hurt lovely little Golden Glenalvan.
She had a wealth of beauty, and a happy heart that made her seem like a gleam of sunshine in the home she brightened. She was a careless, willful child not yet sixteen.
The plain, simple, blue gingham dress was worn quite short, yet, the beautiful, golden tresses fell to her waist in long, loose, childish ringlets.
Free and careless as the birds, she roamed at will through the wild, neglected park and the green woods that lay around her ancestral home.
The dwellers in Glenalvan Hall were divided into two families. In the best and most habitable part, John Glenalvan lived with his wife and family, consisting of two daughters and a son. In a few battered rooms in the tumble-down wing, John Glenalvan's father, an old and hoary-headed man, kept house with his pretty little granddaughter, Golden, and one old black servant called Dinah.
We have digressed a little from Golden as she stands beside the lake, swinging her wide, straw hat by its blue ribbons. Let us return.
The little maiden is communing with herself. Quite unconsciously she speaks her thoughts aloud:
"Old Dinah says that Elinor and Clare will give a little party to-night in honor of their brother's wealthy friend, who is to come on a visit to him to-day. How I wish they would invite me. I should like to go."
"Should you now, really?" said a slightly sarcastic voice close to her.