those days of picnics and balls; of dinners at that recent innovation,
the club; of theatre-parties and excursions to baseball games between the
young men in Mrs. Hayden's train (and all young men were) who played at
Harvard or Yale or Princeton; those days were too care-free to have
endured.

"Aunt Mary," asked Honora, when they were home again in the lamplight of
the little sitting-room, "why was it that Mr. Meeker was so polite to
Cousin Eleanor, and asked her about my dancing instead of you?"

Aunt Mary smiled.

"Because, Honora," she said, "because I am a person of no importance in
Mr. Meeker's eyes."

"If I were a man," cried Honora, fiercely, "I should never rest until I
had made enough money to make Mr. Meeker wriggle."

"Honora, come here," said her aunt, gazing in troubled surprise at the
tense little figure by the mantel. "I don't know what could have put such
things into your head, my child. Money isn't everything. In times of real
trouble it cannot save one."

"But it can save one from humiliation!" exclaimed Honora, unexpectedly.
Another sign of a peculiar precociousness, at fourteen, with which Aunt
Mary was finding herself unable to cope. "I would rather be killed than
humiliated by Mr. Meeker."

Whereupon she flew out of the room and upstairs, where old Catherine, in
dismay, found her sobbing a little later.