her whole
heart; she wouldn't have liked the other girl so well in the first
place, and now any such overturn would--it would just break her heart!

No, that couldn't be. After all, she couldn't have done otherwise.
She _had_ to say what she did on account of the game. Being cast for a
part, she had to play it, even though it might be disagreeable at
times. And it _wasn't_ worse because her mother was dead; being in
heaven, her mother would understand and condone. How did that hymn go?

She sat erect and sang, very sweetly, the stanza that applied:

"There is no place where earth's sorrows
Are so felt as up in heaven,
There is no place where earth's failings
Have such kindly judgment given."

That comforted her strangely. "Uncle John couldn't have administered
first aid himself more successfully," she said to herself humorously as
she dried her eyes.

She bathed her face and, standing before the mirror, addressed the
charming reflection in the pink frock. She mustn't expect plain
sailing all the time she warned her. She must expect to be _up against
it_ frequently. She must keep her class motto in mind and not expect
everything to be dead easy. It was hard not to be able to claim one's
beautiful mother; but she was playing a part; she was on the stage in
costume, and the part-she-was-playing's mother's name wasn't Middleton
nor Moss and was Augusta Pritchard. She must keep her motto in mind
and say continually to herself: "Act well your part, there all the
honor lies."

That very evening at dinner some one asked her where she got her
dimples--whether they were inherited?

"Or, perhaps, Miss Marley's a freak like the white peacock at the
gardens?" broke in a callow youth whom Elsie disliked.

"From my mother," she said quickly, and Miss Pritchard, sensitive to
the least sound of hurt in Elsie's voice, introduced another subject.

Nevertheless, she wondered. She hadn't seen Augusta Pritchard since
the latter was a girl of nineteen, but she couldn't recollect that she
had any dimples or shadows of dimples. She couldn't even imagine the
combination of dimples with her white, cold, rather expressionless
face, nor reconcile them with the true Pritchard temperament. It
seemed inconceivable that Elsie could have inherited them except
through the Marleys; and yet, of course, Elsie remembered her mother
who had died only three years ago.

She had to consider that the girl didn't like that