an inferior quality of ice cream. Five o'clock was the hour for
"sodas," neither half-past four nor half-past five was at all the
same thing in the eyes of Monroe's young people. After that they
would wander idly toward the bridge, and separate; Grace Hawkes
turning toward the sunset for another quarter of a mile, Rose
Ransome opening the garden gate of the pretty, vine-covered cottage
near the bridge, and the Monroe girls, Sarah and Martha, in a
desperate hurry now, flying up the twilight quiet of North Main
Street to the long picket fence, the dark, tree-shaded garden, and
the shabby side-doorway of the old Monroe house.

Three of these girls met almost every afternoon, going first to each
other's houses, and later wandering down for the mail, for some
trivial errand at drug store or dry-goods store, and for the
inevitable ices. Rose Ransome was not often with them, for Rose was
just a little superior in several ways to her present companions,
and frequently spent the afternoon practising on her violin, or
driving, or walking with the Parker girls and Florence Frost, who
hardly recognized the existence of Grace Hawkes and the Monroes. The
one bank in Monroe was the Frost and Parker Bank; there were Frost
Street and Parker Street, the Frost Building and the Parker
Building. May and Ida Parker and Florence Frost had gone to Miss
Bell's Private School when they were little, and then to Miss
Spencer's School in New York.

But even all this might not have accounted for the exclusive social
instincts of the young ladies if both families had not been very
rich. As it was, with prosperous fathers and ambitious mothers, with
well-kept, old-fashioned homes, pews in church, allowances of so
many hundred dollars a year, horses to ride and drive, and servants