hitherto come into relation. To the poor, to whom she was invariably and
essentially kind, she was less condescending than to such as came nearer
her own imagined standing; she was constantly aware that she belonged to
the elect of the land! Society took its revenge; the rich trades-people
looked down upon her as the school-master's daughter. Against their
arrogance her indignation buttressed her lineal with her mental
superiority. At the last the pride of family is a personal arrogance.
And now at length she was in her natural position as heiress of Potlurg!

She was religious--if one may be called religious who felt no immediate
relation to the source of her being. She felt bound to defend, so far as
she honestly could, the doctrines concerning God and His ways
transmitted by the elders of her people; to this much, and little more,
her religion toward God amounted. But she had a strong sense of
obligation to do what was right.

Her father gave her so little money to spend that she had to be very
careful with her housekeeping, and they lived in the humblest way. For
her person she troubled him as little as she could, believing him, from
the half statements and hints he gave, and his general carriage toward
life, not a little oppressed by lack of money, nor suspecting his
necessities created and his difficulties induced by himself. In this
regard it had come to be understood between them that the produce of the
poultry-yard was Alexa's own; and to some little store she had thus
gathered she mainly trusted for the requirements of her invalid. To this
her father could not object, though he did not like it; he felt what was
hers to be his more than he felt what was his to be hers.

Alexa had not learned to place value on money beyond its use, but she
was not therefore free from the service of Mammon; she looked to it as