ollege societies over a live
freshman. She was nobody by her connections, it is true, so far as
they could find out, but then, on the other hand, she had the walk of
a queen, and she looked as if a few stylish dresses and a season or
two would make her a belle of the first water. She had that air of
indifference to their little looks and whispered comments which is
surest to disarm all the critics of a small tattling community. On the
other hand, she came to this school to learn, and not to play; and the
modest and more plainly dressed girls, whose fathers did not sell by the
cargo, or keep victualling establishments for some hundreds of people,
considered her as rather in sympathy with them than with the daughters
of the rough-and-tumble millionnaires who were grappling and rolling
over each other in the golden dust of the great city markets.

She did not mean to belong exclusively to either of their sets. She came
with that sense of manifold deficiencies, and eager ambition to supply
them, which carries any learner upward, as if on wings, over the heads
of the mechanical plodders and the indifferent routinists. She learned,
therefore, in a way to surprise the experienced instructors. Her
somewhat rude sketching soon began to show something of the artist's
touch. Her voice, which had only been taught to warble the simplest
melodies, after a little training began to show its force and sweetness
and flexibility in the airs that enchant drawing-room audiences.
She caught with great readiness the manner of the easiest girls,
unconsciously, for she inherited old social instincts which became
nature with the briefest exercise. Not much license of dress was allowed
in the educational establishment of Madam Delacoste, but every girl
had an opportunity to show her taste within the conventional limits
prescribed. And Myrtle soon began to challenge remark by a certain air
she contrived to give her dresses, and the skill with which she blended
their colors.

"Tell you what, girls," said Miss Berengaria Topping, female
representative of the great dynasty that ruled over the world-famous
Planet Hotel, "she's got style, lots of it. I call her perfectly
splendid, when she's got up in her swell clothes. That oriole's wing
she wears in her bonnet makes her look gorgeous, she'll be a stunning
Pocahontas for the next tableau."

Miss Rose Bugbee, whose family opulence grew out of the only
merchantable article a Hebrew is never known to