There will sometimes be in the village one girl who cherishes a higher ideal of conduct than she sees embodied in the life about her. Where did she get it? Perhaps from a mother who, immersed in her home cares and burdens, has taken little part in the affairs in the town. She in turn received from her mother delicate thoughts that have vanished from the village when a lower standard of manners came in with certain new and less cultivated people. In this new atmosphere the daughter has tried to live and has been mostly alone. Lack of companionship has made her unsocial and somewhat unbending. Her mind lacks swift response because she has had no chance to practise swiftness of response in conversation and repartee. Moreover, she has not the influence among the girls that she ought to have because they take her search for better forms of conduct for self-conceit; they consider her proud and stiff and priggish; those touches of ceremoniousness which she chooses because of her passion for beauty and grace, they consider affectation. There is no place like the country to put affectation in its place; but it is as possible there as elsewhere to misjudge the real sources of inspiration in matters of conduct. In the hearts of these very girls who look askance at the solitary one as she passes along the village path and talk among themselves about her primness and her pride, there may be a great admiration for her after all, a desire to copy all her little touches of elegance, a swift noting of her graces and of everything new she adds to her repertoire of manners. If she keeps her body very straight and holds her chin correctly, they will be looking in the glass to find out whether their spinal column can be stiffened to give the same effect. They may laugh at her but they try to imitate her. After all, you see, the fundamental standards are the same; the difference being that one girl comes almost to the point of living up to them, the other girls have tried and because of ignorance or lack of opportunity have failed, and have looked upon their failure until they have despaired of ever succeeding. Fundamentally there is the same desire at the heart of both the refined recluse girl who longs to have company among the other girls, and the less agreeable, less refined and less cultivated girls who secretly envy while they ridicule, and are waiting only for the open door to enable them to walk in and leave their coarseness and bungling outside.