"I mean that I'm simply tired of being a nothing and a nobody in a family
of nothings and nobodies. That's what it comes to. I'm tired of being a
bump on a log. I'm tired of sitting on the fence and seeing the
procession go by. Why can't _we_ go by? Why can't _we_ know people? Why
can't _we_ make ourselves felt? Other folks do."

Mrs. Rhodes passed over in silence this imputation of nullity; she was
not so closely related, after all, that she need allow herself to be
disturbed by it. But sister Alice took up the cudgel with all the ardor
of an immediate connection and all the sensitiveness of a suburban
resident. She even forgot the real, essential object of her visit: to
intimate to her father that if he would give her a carriage, her husband
could pay for the keep of a horse.

She was a contentious blonde, with a thin, aquiline nose and a pair of
flashing steel-blue eyes. Several wisps of straw-colored hair blew about
her temples.

"Thank you, Jane," she said, hotly; "I don't know that I feel myself a
nobody, and I don't feel that I'm exactly a social outcast--even if I
_do_ live beyond the city limits." She turned back a floating lock with a
hasty wave. "It might be to your advantage if you moved somewhere or
other yourselves. I don't see how you can expect to see anybody or know
anybody as long as you are buried in such a sepulchre as this."

Alice was the radical, the innovator of the family. She often brought her
conservative mother to the verge of horror. Hers was the hardy, daring,
and unconventional strain of the pioneer. She liked the edge; if the edge
was a little ragged, so much the better.