attained to heights where her parents may never hope to come, a
common enough case here in flux and fluid America, and one which some
will applaud and some will deplore, depending on how they view such
matters; a daughter proclaiming by her attitude that she is ashamed of
the sources of her origin; a father and a mother visibly proud of their
offspring's successful rise, yet uncomplainingly accepting the roles to
which she has assigned them--there you have this small family tragedy in
forty words or less.

When the Millsaps moved to our town their baby was in her second summer.
With the passage of years the father and the mother came, as suitably
mated couples often do, to look rather like each other. But then,
probably there never had been a time when they, either in temperament or
port, had appeared greatly unlike, seeing that both the pair were
colorless, prosaic folk. So for Nature to mold them into a common
pattern was merely a detail of time and patience. But their little
Eleanor betrayed no resemblance to either in figure or face or
personality. It was in this instance as though hereditary traits had
been thwarted; as though two sober barnyard fowl had mated to bear a
golden pheasant. They were secluded, shy, unimaginative; she was vivid
and sprightly, with dash to her, and audacity.

They lived in one of those small gloomy houses whose shutters always are
closed and whose fronts always are blank; a house where the business of
living seems to be carried on surreptitiously, almost by stealth. She,
from the time she could walk alone, was actively abroad, a bright splash
of color in the small oblong of shabby front yard. The father, Felix
Millsap, was an odd-jobs woodworker. He made his living by undertakings
too trivial for a contracting carpenter and joiner to bid on and too
complicated for an amateur to attempt. The mother, Martha by name, took
in plain sewing to help out. She had about her the air of the needle
drudge, with shoulders bowed in and the pricked, scored fingers of a
seamstress, and a permanent pucker at one corner of her mouth from
holding pins there. The daughter showed trim, slender limbs and a bodily
grace and a piquant face which generations of breeding and wealth so
very often fail to fashion.

When she graduated as the valedictorian of her class in the high school
she cut a far better figure in the frock her mother had made for her
than did any there on the stage at St. Clair Hall; she had a