Jewel Weed

And Miss Elton! She hated Miss Elton for that irritating calmness, for

that easy appropriation of the good things of life. She hated with a

hate that tingled her spine and shook her small body. The tragedy of

littleness made her grit her teeth as she thought of the unconscious

girl now going to bed in the next room.

"I'll get even with her somehow," was Miss Lena's resolve. "Just let me

get the hang of things a little, and I'll show her!" Miss Quincy was

conscious that though she as yet lacked knowledge of their world, she

had the advantage of the inheritance of guile.

But things! things! things! Lena thought a little of the irony of

it--that all her life she had pined to be set in luxury, and yet now and

here the very rugs and chairs and soft lights, the pictures of

unrecognized subjects, the unfamiliar delicacies before her at the

table, all seemed to loom up and crush her into insignificance by their

importance and expensiveness. They were her masters still.

But it was not Lena's way to waste her time on abstractions. While she

sat and watched her fire crumble away into ashes, she was chiefly

occupied with the concrete, and there entered into her soul and took

possession of its empty chambers and began to mold her to her own

purposes the demon of social ambition, which is not the desire to do or

to be, but rather the longing to appear to be and to seem to do--to take

the chaff and leave the wheat.

Mastered by this powerful spirit, Lena actually did make great strides

in the next few days. She learned to lounge quite comfortably, to

pretend with verisimilitude, even to chatter a little, helped chiefly by

a certain persistent light-weight on the part of Mr. Lenox; but the life

was hard and the rewards meager. All the time she suspected Miss Elton

and Mrs. Lenox of despising her, because she had so much less than they.

Their kindliness was but an added insult.