Annabelle Chapin was one of Claude's classmates. She was not as
dull as her brother; she could learn a conjugation and recognize
the forms when she met with them again. But she was a gushing,
silly girl, who found almost everything in their grubby life too
good to be true; and she was, unfortunately, sentimental about
Claude. Annabelle chanted her lessons over and over to herself
while she cooked and scrubbed. She was one of those people who
can make the finest things seem tame and flat merely by alluding
to them. Last winter she had recited the odes of Horace about the
house--it was exactly her notion of the student-like thing to
do--until Claude feared he would always associate that poet with
the heaviness of hurriedly prepared luncheons.

Mrs. Wheeler liked to feel that Claude was assisting this worthy
pair in their struggle for an education; but he had long ago
decided that since neither of the Chapins got anything out of
their efforts but a kind of messy inefficiency, the struggle
might better have been relinquished in the beginning. He took
care of his own room; kept it bare and habitable, free from
Annabelle's attentions and decorations. But the flimsy pretences
of light-housekeeping were very distasteful to him. He was born
with a love of order, just as he was born with red hair. It was a
personal attribute.

The boy felt bitterly about the way in which he had been brought
up, and about his hair and his freckles and his awkwardness. When
he went to the theatre in Lincoln, he took a seat in the gallery,
because he knew that he looked like a green country boy. His
clothes were never right. He bought collars that were too high
and neckties that were too bright, and hid them away in his