Here Anna paused to take breath, and Reinette, who had listened to her wonderingly, said: “And do your cousins, Ethel and Grace, share your opinions?” “Of course not. Why should they? Aren’t they big bugs, Colonel Rossiter’s daughters? Don’t they go to Saratoga, and Newport, and Florida, and the sea-side, and have a maid, and drive their carriage, and live in a big house? Such people can never understand why girls like me feel as I do. Ethel and Grace laugh at me, and say I am just as good as they are; and so I am, though the world don’t think so. Their mother used to stitch shoes for the shop when a girl, and sell gingerbread across the counter sometimes, just as your mother did. You know, perhaps, that Grandma Ferguson kept a kind of baker’s shop.” Reinette flushed to the roots of her hair as she replied; “Yes, I know, but I supposed one’s respectability depended upon himself—his conduct, I mean, rather than what he does for a living—if the business is honest and justifiable.” “There’s where you are grandly mistaken,” said Anna. “One’s position depends upon how much money he has, or how many influential friends. Is my Aunt Mary any better than when she stitched shoes and sold gingerbread? Of course not. She’s John Ferguson’s daughter just the same; but she’s rich now. She is Mrs. Colonel Rossiter, and looked up to, and admired, and run after by the whole town, while ma and I are just tolerated because of our relationship to her. ‘Who is that stylish-looking girl?’ I once heard a stranger say to Sue Granger, who replied: ‘That’s Anna Ferguson; her mother is a dressmaker,’ and that settled it. The stranger—a stuck-up piece from Boston—cared nothing for a girl whose mother made dresses for a living. Sometimes I get so mad I hate everything and everybody.” Here Anna stopped a moment, and Reinette scanned her very closely from her head to her feet, deciding, mentally that she was good-looking, and had about her a certain style which strangers would naturally remark, even though it was rather fast than refined. But she was not a lady, either by nature or education, and Reinette, who, in some things was far-seeing for her years, saw readily the difficulty under which her cousin labored. She was not naturally refined, but on the contrary, vulgar and suspicious, and jealous of those who occupied a position above her; and while she took pains with her person, and affected a certain haughtiness of manner, her language was decidedly second-class and frequently interlarded with slang and harsh denunciations of the very people whose favor she wished to gain. While Reinette was thinking all this, Anna began again: “I wish mother would sell out and take that odious sign from our front window; we can live without dressmaking, but I’ve given it up. She had a chance a few weeks ago. A Frenchwoman from Martha’s Vineyard wrote, asking her terms, which she put so high that Miss La Rue declined, and so that fell through.”