of
shops. The neighborhood was deteriorating, or evolving, as you happened
to look at it.

The Washington Trust Company seemed to have quite forgotten the
existence of the Clark women except for the occasional appearance in the
mail of an oblong letter addressed in type to Mrs. Ellen Trigg Clark,
which bore in its upper left-hand corner a neat vignette of the trust
building. Adelle studied these envelopes carefully, not to say tenderly,
with something of the emotion that the trust company's home had roused
in her the only time she had been within its doors. The vignette, which
represented a considerable Grecian temple, she thought "pretty," and the
neat, substantial-looking envelope suggested a rich importance to the
communication within that also pleased the girl. She knew that it had to
do with her remotely. Yet there was never anything thrilling in these
communications from the trust company. They were signed by Mr. Gardiner
and curtly informed Mrs. Clark of certain meaningless facts or more
often curtly inquired for information,--"Awaiting your kind reply,"
etc., or merely requested politely another example of the widow's
signature. They were models of brief, impersonal, business
communications. If Adelle had ever had any experience of personal
relationship she might have resented these perfunctory epistles from her
legal guardian, but for all she knew that was the way all people treated
one another. Evidently her legal guardian had no desire for any closer
personal contact with its ward, and she waited, not so much patiently as
pensively, for it to demonstrate a more lively interest in her
existence....

Meanwhile there was debate in the Church Street house about a matter
that more closely touched the young girl. She had graduated from the
Everitt School the preceding June and would naturally be going on now
into the high school with her better conditioned schoolmates. But she
herself, though not averse to school, had suggested that she should stay
at home and help her aunt in the house or find a place in one of the
shops in the Square where she might earn a little money. Mrs. Clark, who
has been described as a realist, might have favored this practical plan,
had it not been that Adelle was a Clark--all that was left of them, in
fact. The widow had lived so long under the shadow of the Clark
expectations that she could not easily escape from their control now
that she was alone. A Trigg, of course, under similar