rty
said she had the air of belonging in such surroundings much more than
Emily, whom even budding womanhood had not made beautiful. And Eliphalet
Hopper Dwyer, if his actions meant anything, would have welcomed her to
that house, or built her another twice as fine, had she deigned to give
him the least encouragement.

Cinderella! This was what she facetiously called herself one July morning
of that summer she was eighteen.

Cinderella in more senses than one, for never had the city seemed more
dirty or more deserted, or indeed, more stifling. Winter and its
festivities were a dream laid away in moth balls. Surely Cinderella's
life had held no greater contrasts! To this day the odour of matting
brings back to Honora the sense of closed shutters; of a stifling south
wind stirring their slats at noonday; the vision of Aunt Mary, cool and
placid in a cambric sacque, sewing by the window in the upper hall, and
the sound of fruit venders crying in the street, or of ragmen in the
alley--"Rags, bottles, old iron!" What memories of endless, burning,
lonely days come rushing back with those words!

When the sun had sufficiently heated the bricks of the surrounding houses
in order that he might not be forgotten during the night, he slowly
departed. If Honora took her book under the maple tree in the yard, she
was confronted with that hideous wooden sign "To Let" on the Dwyer's iron
fence opposite, and the grass behind it was unkempt and overgrown with
weeds. Aunt Mary took an unceasing and (to Honora's mind) morbid interest
in the future of that house.

"I suppose it will be a boarding-house," she would say, "it's much too
large for poor people to rent, and only poor people are coming into this
district now."

"Oh, Aunt Mary!"

"Well, my dear, why should we complain? We are poor, and it is
appropriate that we should live among the poor. Sometimes I think it is a
pity that you should have been thrown all your life with rich people, my
child. I am afraid it has made you discontented. It is no disgrace to be
poor. We ought to be thankful that we have everything we need."

Honora put down her sewing. For she had learned to sew--Aunt Mary had
insisted upon that, as well as French. She laid her hand upon her aunt's.

"I am thankful," she said, and her aunt little guessed the intensity of
the emotion she was seeking to control, or imagined the hidden fires.
"But sometimes--sometimes I try to forget that we are poor. Perhaps
--