She loved many of the village people, with whom she had stood from infancy in the simplest cordial relations. It hurt a little to discover their pleasure in these changes, the mean ambitions, as it seemed to Celia, which they were developing. She found it difficult to be just, and pardon as natural their satisfaction in the growing material prosperity brought about by the influx of people drawn by the Emporium. The widow of the old store-keeper, upon the strength of it, had opened an Ice-Cream Room. They loved the increased liveliness, too. Celia could not blame them: her winters were lively, while theirs were dull enough. But she came here for rest, the village of her love had been ideally sleepy. Now it was spoiled for her. It hurt her, too, like a needle-point of neuralgia, to observe, as she fancied, a new tone among the younger people. Were those really attempts at style and dash and smartness she witnessed in the children of good old Asah and Jerusha Brown? Heart-sick, if she allowed herself to consider the spreading of a leaven which would in time unfit the place for her habitation, she lived more secluded than had been her habit while there in former days. The old house was easily sufficient to itself in the matter of society. The family made but a small group, but friends of Celia's from the outside world succeeded each other in the enjoyment of the Comptons' hospitality, of an elegance as simple as it was graceful. She had half suspected what pernicious admiration must be at the root of the degeneracy she perceived among the village girls, when one day--this was soon after her return--she saw Judith Bray. It was in the Emporium, for, no matter how much you hate an Emporium, if there is not the least thread-and-needle store beside, you may be forced to patronize it. The attendant, matching embroidery-silks for her, bent to say: "That across the aisle is Miss Bray." Celia looked.