something extra. You think, Mrs. Lasette, that
there is something wonderful about Annette, but I can't see it, and I
hear a lot of people say she hasn't got good sense."

"They do not understand the child."

"They all say that she is very odd and queer and often goes out into the
street as if she never saw a looking glass. Why, Mrs. Miller's daughter
just laughed till she was tired at the way Annette was dressed when she
went to call on an acquaintance of hers. Why, Annette just makes herself
a perfect laughing stock."

"Well, I think Mary Miller might have found better employment than
laughing at her company."

"Now, let me tell you, Mary Miller don't take her for company, and that
very evening Annette was at my house, just next door, and when Mary
Miller went to church she never asked her to go along with her, although
she belongs to the same church."

"I am sorry to say it," said grandmother Harcourt, "but your Alice
hardly ever comes to see Annette, and never asks her to go anywhere with
her, but may be in the long run Annette will come out better than some
who now look down upon her. It is a long road that has no turn and
Annette is like a singed cat; she is better than she looks."

"I think," said Mrs. Lasette, "while Annette is very bright and
intelligent as a pupil, she has been rather slow in developing in some
other directions. She lacks tact, is straightforward to bluntness and
has not any style about her and little or no idea of company manners,
but she is never coarse nor rude. I never knew her to read a book whose
author I would blush to name, and I never heard her engage in any
conversation I would shrink to hear repeated. I don't think there is a
girl of purer lips in A.P. than Annette, and I do not think your set, as
you call it, has such a monopoly of either virtue or intelligence that
you can afford to ridicule and depress any young soul who does not
happen to come up to your social standard. Where dress and style are
passports Annette may be excluded, but where brain and character count
Annette will gain admittance. I fear," said Mrs. Lasette, rising to go,
"that many a young girl has gone down in the very depths who might have
been saved if motherly women, when they saw them unloved and lonely, had
reached out to them a helping hand and encouraged them to live useful
and good lives. We cry am I my sister's keeper? [I?] will not wipe the
blood off our hands if through pride and selfishness we