f the room where she was taking off her hat. Her
fingers were trembling so that she could scarcely get the pins. "That
little woman you were so chilly to is a pretty fine sort, Amy," he said
incisively.

"Because she is going to see Ruth Holland?" she retorted with an excited
laugh.

"Oh, you were pretty stand-offish before you knew that," he answered
coolly.

Vanity smarting from deeper hurts made her answer, haughtily: "I'm
rather inexperienced, you know, in meeting people of that class."

In his heart too there were deeper disappointments than this touched.
"Well, I must say--" he began hotly, "I think if I felt as snobbish as
that I'd try pretty hard to conceal it!"

Amy was carefully putting away her hat; she had an appearance of cold
composure, of a sense of superiority. It was because she wanted to keep
that that she did not speak. The things within would so completely have
destroyed it.

"I guess you don't understand, Amy," said Deane, quieted by her silence;
"if you knew all about Annie Morris I think you'd see she is a woman
worth meeting." Thinking of his talk with Edith and her mother that
morning, he added, a good deal of feeling breaking into his voice: "A
good sight more so than some of the people you are meeting!"

"And of course," she could not hold back, "they--those inferior
people--won't go to see Ruth Holland, and this wonderful woman will!
That's the secret of it, isn't it?"

"It's one thing that shows her superiority," he replied coolly. "Another
thing is her pluck--grit. Her husband is a dolt, and she's determined
her three children shall have some sort of a show in life, so she's
driven ahead--worked from daylight till dark many a time--to make decent
things possible for them."

"Well, that's very commendable, I'm sure," replied Amy mildly, appearing
to be chiefly concerned with a loose button on the wrap she had just
taken off.

"And with all that she's kept her own spirit alive; she's not going to
let life get clear ahead of _her_, either. She's pretty valiant, I
think." He was thinking again of Edith and her mother as he added
contentiously, "I don't know any woman in this town I'd rather talk to!"

Amy, appearing quite outside the things that were disturbing him, only
smiled politely and threaded a needle for sewing on the button. He stood
there in the doorway, fidgeting, his face red. She seemed so uncaring;
she seemed so far away. "Oh, Amy!" he cried, miserably, appealingly.