these bitter, brutal truths,--

"I've learned them from the older people I've seen all my life,--the
people who come to our house. They judge other people that they don't
know anything about in just such calculating ways. They are always
talking with you about this one or that one's social position, and they
never make new acquaintances without finding out what set they belong
to; and I was never allowed from a little girl to make acquaintances
with any children whose mothers were not in the right set; and
amiability and goodness had nothing to do with it,--nothing, nothing,
nothing!"






THE EGG-BOY.




"Marge, Marge, here is the egg-boy!"

Marge dropped her book and ran to join her sister Elsie, who by this
time was on the back piazza talking to a boy who had just driven up in a
farm-wagon.

"We want two dozen more,--all nice big ones, and by to-morrow, for it is
only three days before Easter, and they must be boiled and colored to be