II


Gora recalled the day when she had walked slowly past those mansions,
staring at each in turn as she assimilated the disheartening and
infuriating fact that she and the children that inhabited them belonged to
different worlds.

Her family at that time lived in a cottage at the wrong end of Taylor
Street Hill, and, Mrs. Dwight having received a small legacy from a sister
recently deceased which had convinced her, if not her less mercurial
husband, that their luck had finally turned, had sent Gora, then a rangy
girl of thirteen, fond of books and study, to a large private school in the
fashionable district.

Gora, after all these years, ground her teeth as she had a sudden blighting
vision of the day a week later, when, puzzled and resentful, she had walked
up the steep hill with several of the girls whose homes were on California
and Taylor Streets, and two of whom, like herself, were munching an apple.

They had hardly noticed her sufficiently to ignore her, either then or
during the previous week, so absorbed were they in their own close common
interests. She listened to allusions which she barely could comprehend, but
it was evident that one was to give a party on Friday night and the others
were expected as a matter of course. Gora assumed that Jim and Sam and Rex
and Bob were brothers or beaux. Last names appeared to be no more necessary
than labels to inform the outsider of the social status of these favored
maidens, too happy and contented to be snobs but quite callous to the
feelings of strange little girls.