added, loving the whole truth, "I told them the other morning I
should like them to come."

"I don't suppose it makes any difference," Mrs. Argenter answered,
listlessly, turning her head away upon the sofa cushion.

"It makes the difference, Amata," said Sylvie, with a bright
gentleness, and touching her mother's pretty hair with a tender
finger, "that I shall be a great deal happier and better to know
such girls; people we have got to live amongst, and ought to live a
little like. You can't think how pleasant it was to talk with them.
All my life it has seemed as if I never really got hold of people."

"You certainly forget the Sherretts."

"No, I don't. But I never got hold of them much while I was just
edging alongside. I think some people grasp hands the better for a
little space to reach across. You mayn't be born quite in the
purple, as Susan Nipper would say, but it isn't any reason you
should try to pinch yourself black and blue. I've got all over it,
and I like the russet a great deal better. I wish you could."

"I can't begin again," said Mrs. Argenter. "My life is torn up by
the roots, and there is the end of it."

It was true. Sylvie felt that it was so, as her mother spoke, and
she reproached herself for her own light content. How could her
mother make intimacy with Mrs. Knoxwell, the old blacksmith's wife,
or Mrs. Pevear, the carriage-painter's? Or even good, homely Mrs.
Ingraham, over the bake-shop? It is so much easier for girls to come