ter group she had "more fun," but that with her
more elevated friends she enjoyed, of course, "nicer times."
Politically she steered a diplomatic middle course between the two,
implying, with equal readiness, that she only associated with the poor
Monroes because Uncle Ben made her, or that she accepted invitations
from the Frost and Parker faction simply to be amiable.

Sally Monroe, innocent, simple, unexacting at twenty-one, really
believed Rose to be the sweetly frank and artless person she seemed,
but Martie, two years younger, had her times of absolutely detesting
Rose. Sally was never jealous, but Martie burned with a fierce young
jealousy of all life: of Rose, with her dainty frocks and her rich
friends, her curly hair and her violin; of Florence Frost's riding
horse; of Ida Parker's glib French; of her own brother, Leonard Monroe,
with his male independence; of the bare-armed women who leaped on the
big, flat-backed horses in the circus; of the very Portuguese children
who rode home asleep of a summer afternoon, in fragrant loads of
alfalfa.

To-day she was vaguely smarting at Grace's news: Grace was going to
work. She, like the Monroe girls, had often discussed the possibilities
of this step, but opportunities were not many, and the idle, pleasant
years drifted by with no change. But Ellie Hawkes, Grace's big sister,
who had kept books in the box factory for three years, was to be
married now; a step down for Ellie--for her "friend" was only Terry
Castle, a brawny, ignorant giant employed by the Express Company--but a
step up for Grace. She would be a wage-earner; her pretty, weak face
grew animated at the thought, and her shrill voice more shrill.

Martie Monroe had no real desire to work in the box factory, to walk
daily the ugly half mile that lay between it and her home, to join the
ranks of toilers that filed through the poorer region of town every
morning. But like all growing young things she felt a desperate,
undefined need. She could not know that self-expression is as necessary
to natures like hers as breath is to young bodies. She could only grope
and yearn and struggle in the darkness of her soul.

She was nineteen, a tall, strong girl, already fully developed, and
handsome in a rather dull and heavy way. Her hands and feet were
beautifully made, her hair, although neglected, of a wonderful silky
bronze, and her skin naturally of the clear creamy type that sometimes
accompanies such hair. But M