ck rather tartly, "I don't see why
you should put such an emphasis on 'me,' as if you were so inferior.
You're as good as Marian Selwyn."

"Yes, Martha, I know--it isn't that I feel inferior in--in myself,"
Angela exclaimed; "but the Selwyns have always had money and
everything--always, and we are poor and have lived so out of the way
that I say it's beautiful and kind of Marian, when she knows me so
little. Why, Martha, I never see her anywhere but on the street and at
Sunday-school."

"Well, she likes you, I suppose. She's taken a fancy to you, and she's
independent enough, I should hope, to invite any girl she likes, if the
girl _is_ poor and lives out of the way," was Martha's cool reply.

Liked her! Taken a fancy to her! How Angela's heart jumped at this
suggestion! Could it be possible that this lovely fortunate Marian
Selwyn, that she had always admired from afar off, had taken a fancy to
_her_,--poor, plain little Angela Jocelyn,--was her thought. And it was
with this thought quickening her pulses that she wrote a cordial
acceptance to the note of invitation; and it was this thought that sent
such a bright look into her face that morning, that Mary Marcy said to
her friend and seat-mate, Anna Richards, "Look at Angela Jocelyn, she is
really growing pretty;" and a little later at the recess that followed
directly after a recitation where Angela had easily led, as usual, Mary,
catching sight of the frowning faces of Lizzy and Nelly Ryder,
exclaimed: "Anna, if Angela Jocelyn is going to add good looks to her
braininess, those Ryder girls will be more jealous of her than ever."

"And they pretend to look down on Angela because she is poor and her
mother and sister take in sewing," responded Anna.

"All the same they don't look down on what Angela really _is_. She is
superior to them in brains, and they know it, and that makes them want
to pull her down," answered Mary.

"Yes, I heard Nelly Ryder say last week that Angela was altogether too
conceited, and ought to be 'taken down'; and it would be just like Nelly
Ryder to try to do it sometime."

"_Sometime_! I believe she is trying to do it now. I believe that that
is the mischief she and her cousin Lizzy are planning this moment,"
cried Mary.

"What _do_ you mean?"

"I'll tell you;" and Mary related, as she had related to her mother,
what she had seen and heard.

"Nelly Ryder has never forgiven Angela for getting the history prize;
Nelly thought herself