room to lock herself in and
weep and rage and hate. And at the high school, when Susan
scored in a recitation or in some dramatic entertainment, Ruth
would sit with bitten lip and surging bosom, pale with jealousy.
Susan's isolation, the way the boys avoided having with her the
friendly relations that spring up naturally among young people
these gave Ruth a partial revenge. But Susan, seemingly
unconscious, rising sweetly and serenely above all pettiness--

Ruth's hatred deepened, though she hid it from everyone, almost
from herself. And she depended more and more utterly upon Susan
to select her clothes for her, to dress her, to make her look
well; for Susan had taste and Ruth had not.

On that bright June morning as the cousins went up Main Street
together, Susan gave herself over to the delight of sun and air
and of the flowering gardens before the attractive houses they
were passing; Ruth, with the day quite dark for her, all its
joys gone, was fighting against a hatred of her cousin so
vicious that it made her afraid. "I'll have no chance at all,"
her angry heart was saying, "so long as Susie's around, keeping
everybody reminded of the family shame." And that was a truth
she could not downface, mean and ungenerous though thinking it
might be. The worst of all was that Susan, in a simple white
dress and an almost untrimmed white straw hat with a graceful
curve to its brim and set at the right angle upon that wavy dark
hair, was making the beauty of her short blond cousin dim and
somehow common.

At the corner of Maple Street Ruth's self-control reached its
limit. She halted, took the sample of silk from her glove. There
was not a hint of her feelings in her countenance, for shame and
the desire to seem to be better than she was were fast making
her an adept in hypocrisy. "You go ahead and match it for
mamma," said she. "I've got to run in and see Bessie Andrews."

"But I promised Uncle George I'd come and help him with the
monthly bills," objected Susan.

"You can do both. It'll take you only a minute. If mother had
known you were going uptown, she'd never have trusted _me_." And
Ruth had tucked the sample in Susan's belt and was hurrying out
Maple Street. There was nothing for Susan to do but go on alone.

Two squares, and she was passing the show place of Sutherland,
the home of the Wrights. She paused to regale herself with a
glance into the grove of magnificent elms with lawns and bright