Would anybody say that a child could not have such a struggle? that fourteen years do not know yet what "the world" means? Alas, it is a relative term; and a child's "world" may be as mighty for her to face, as any other she will ever know. I think I never found any more formidable. Moreover, it is less unlike the big world than some would suppose.
On the corner of the street, just opposite to our windows, stood a large handsome house which we always noticed for its flowers. The house stood in a little green courtyard exquisitely kept, which at one side and behind gave room for several patches of flower beds, at this time filled with bulbous plants. I always lingered as much as I could in passing the iron railings, to have a peep at the beauty within. The grass was now of a delicious green, and the tulips and hyacinths and crocuses were in full bloom, in their different oval-shaped beds, framed in with the green. Besides these, from the windows of a greenhouse that stretched back along the street, there looked over a brilliant array of other beauty; I could not tell what; great bunches of scarlet and tufts of white and gleamings of yellow, that made me long to be there.
"Who lives in that house?" Miss Bentley asked one evening. It was the hour before tea, and we were all at our room windows gazing down into the avenue.
"Why, don't you know?" said slow Miss Macy. "That's Miss Cardigan's house."
"I wonder who she is?" said Miss Lansing. "It isn't a New York name."
"Yes, it is," said Macy. "She's lived there for ever. She used to be there, and her flowers, when I was four years old."
"I guess she isn't anybody, is she?" said Miss Bentley. "I
never see any carriages at the door. Hasn't she a carriage of her own, I wonder, or how does she travel? Such a house ought to have a carriage."
"I'll tell you," said the St. Clair, coolly as usual. "She goes out in a wagon with an awning to it. She don't know anything about carriages."