well as I could by turning up mine at theirs. They always said it
might be something great and fine to be rightful Shadow of an
earldom, but to merely be shadow of a shadow, and two or three times
removed at that--pooh-pooh! And I always retorted that not to be
able to show four generations of American-Colonial-Dutch Peddler-
and-Salt-Cod-McAllister-Nobility might be endurable, but to have to
confess such an origin--pfew-few! Well, the telegram, it was just a
cyclone! The messenger came right into the great Rob Roy Hall of
Audience, as excited as he could be, singing out, "Dispatch for Lady
Gwendolen Sellers!" and you ought to have seen that simpering
chattering assemblage of pinchbeck aristocrats, turn to stone!
I was off in the corner, of course, by myself--it's where Cinderella
belongs. I took the telegram and read it, and tried to faint--and I
could have done it if I had had any preparation, but it was all so
sudden, you know--but no matter, I did the next best thing: I put my
handkerchief to my eyes and fled sobbing to my room, dropping the
telegram as I started. I released one corner of my eye a moment--
just enough to see the herd swarm for the telegram--and then
continued my broken-hearted flight just as happy as a bird.

Then the visits of condolence began, and I had to accept the loan of
Miss Augusta-Templeton-Ashmore Hamilton's quarters because the press
was so great and there isn't room for three and a cat in mine. And
I've been holding a Lodge of Sorrow ever since and defending myself
against people's attempts to claim kin. And do you know, the very
first girl to fetch her tears and sympathy to my market was that
foolish Skimperton girl who has always snubbed me so shamefully and
claimed lordship and precedence of the whole college because some
ancestor of hers, some time or other, was a McAllister. Why it was
like the bottom bird in the menagerie putting on airs because its