d no one said this more emphatically, and felt it
more emphatically, than Mary Marcy and Angela Jocelyn,--Mary in her
pretty and becoming if rather plain white gown of China silk, and Angela
in her old white cambric that had been 'done over' for the hundredth
time, perhaps, and was neither pretty nor becoming, with its skimp skirt
and sleeves and shrunken waist. But a new gown had been out of the
question just then with the Jocelyns, and Angela had to make the best of
the old one; and it did not seem at all hard to make a very good 'best'
of it, when she stood in her own little bedroom, with Martha tying the
well-worn blue sash around the shrunken waist, and her mother looking on
and saying, "It really looks very nice, and that sash _does_ wash so
well."

But when she went up into the great brilliantly lighted bedchamber at
the Selwyns', and saw Mary Marcy in her perfectly fitting gown drawing
on her delicate gloves, and talking with several young ladies
beautifully dressed in fresh muslin and silk, the skimp skirt and
sleeves, the shrunken waist and washed sash, seemed all at once very
mean and shabby to Angela. They seemed still meaner and shabbier when
two other girls appeared in yet prettier costumes of fresh daintiness;
and when these two dropped their little hooded shoulder-wraps of silk
and lace, and she saw that they were the two Ryder cousins, poor Angela
suddenly began to feel a strange sense of awkwardness and unfitness.
This feeling increased as she noticed the unmistakable start that the
cousins gave as they caught sight of her, and heard Nelly's astonished
exclamation, "What! _you_ here?"

It was a bitter moment; but a bitterer was yet to come, when Lizzy
Ryder, with that innocent little way of hers, said,--

"Oh, if you've come to help take our things off, _do_ help me with this
scarf, Angela!"

If Angela could but have known then and there that this was only a petty
stab from one petty jealous girl! But she did not know. She heard the
words, apparently so innocently spoken, and said to herself, "They think
I am here as a servant, not as a guest!" and with a miserable confused
feeling that everything was wrong, from her acceptance of the invitation
to her shabby gown, she started back with all her confusion merging into
one thought to get away out of the sight of these well-dressed happy
girls. But as she started back, Mary Marcy, who had heard Lizzy Ryder's
speech, started forward and called out: "Oh