thin. Girls who wore fringes were in her eyes stamped with three
certain faults: untidiness, vanity, and love of dressing beyond their
station. Beginning with these, who could tell to what other evils a
fringe might lead? And now, her own child, her Lilac whom she had been
so proud of, and thought so different from others, stood before her with
this abomination on her brow. Bitterest of all, it was the influence of
the Greenways that had triumphed, and not her own. All her care and
toil had ended in this. It had all been in vain. If Lilac "took
pattern" by her cousins in one way she would in another--"a straw can
tell which way the wind blows." She would grow up like Bella and
Agnetta.

Swiftly all this rushed into Mrs White's mind, as she stood looking
with surprise and horror at Lilac's altered face. Finding her voice as
she arrived at the last conclusion, she asked coldly:

"What made yer do it?"

Lilac locked her hands tightly together and made no answer. She would
not say anything about Agnetta, who had meant kindly in what she had
done.

"I know," continued her mother, "without you sayin' a word. It was one
of them Greenways. But I did think as how you'd enough sense and
sperrit of yer own to stand out agin' their foolishness--let alone
anything else. It's plain to me now that you don't care for yer mother
or what she says. You'll fly right in her face to please any of them at
Orchards Farm."

Still Lilac did not speak, and her silence made Mrs White more and more
angry.

"An' what do you think you've got by it?" she continued scornfully. "Do
those silly things think it makes 'em look like ladies to cut their hair
so and dress themselves up fine? Then you can tell 'em this from me:
Vulgar they are, and vulgar they'll be all their lives long, and nothing
they can do to their outsides will change 'em. But they might a left
you alone, Lilac, for you're but a child; only I did think as you'd a
had more sense."

Lilac was crying now. This scolding on the top of much excitement and
disappointment was more than she could bear, but still she felt she must
defend the Greenways from blame.

"It was my fault," she sobbed. "I thought as how it would look nicer."

"The many and many times," pursued Mrs White, drying her hands
vigorously on a rough towel, "as I've tried to make you understand
what's respectable and right and fitting! And it's all been no good.
Well, I've done. Go to your Greenwa