hey did not hold themselves aloof from me. Some of the
girls who came to school in carriages were especially cordial. They
rated me by my scholarship, and not by my father's occupation. They
teased and admired me by turns for learning the footnotes in the Latin
grammar by heart; they never reproached me for my ignorance of the
latest comic opera. And it was more than good breeding that made them
seem unaware of the incongruity of my presence. It was a generous
appreciation of what it meant for a girl from the slums to be in the
Latin School, on the way to college. If our intimacy ended on the
steps of the school-house, it was more my fault than theirs. Most of
the girls were democratic enough to have invited me to their homes,
although to some, of course, I was "impossible." But I had no time for
visiting; school work and reading and family affairs occupied all the
daytime, and much of the night time. I did not "go with" any of the
girls, in the school-girl sense of the phrase. I admired some of them,
either for good looks, or beautiful manners, or more subtle
attributes; but always at a distance. I discovered something
inimitable in the way the Back Bay girls carried themselves; and I
should have been the first to perceive the incongruity of Commonwealth
Avenue entwining arms with Dover Street. Some day, perhaps, when I
should be famous and rich; but not just then. So my companions and I
parted on the steps of the school-house, in mutual respect; they
guiltless of snobbishness, I innocent of envy. It was a graciously
American relation, and I am happy to this day to recall it.

The one exception to this rule of friendly distance was my chum,
Florence Connolly. But I should hardly have said "chum." Florence and
I occupied adjacent seats for three years, but we did not walk arm in
arm, nor call each other nicknames, nor share our lunch, nor
correspond in vacation time. Florence was quiet as a mouse, and I was
reserved as an oyster; and perhaps we two had no more in common
fundamentally than those two creatures in their natural state. Still,
as we were both very studious, and never strayed far from our desks at
recess, we practised a sort of intimacy of propinquity. Although
Florence was of my social order, her father presiding over a cheap
lunch room, I did not on that account feel especially drawn to her. I
spent more time studying Florence than loving her, I suppose. And yet
I ought to have loved her; she was such a goo