“You know as well as I do, Tabitha,” said Miss Kate one afternoon in January, rising from the couch where she had been lounging in sheer idleness, and walking over to the window with slow indolence of gait, “that our whole life here is simply ridiculous. We girls have lived here in Thessaly ever since we were little children, and if we left the place for good to-morrow, positively there would not be a single personal tie to be broken. So far as making friends go, we might as well have lived in the moon, where I believe it is settled that there are no people at all. And pray what is there in life worth having but friends--I mean real friends?” “I had supposed,” began the little lady with the iron-gray curls, who sat primly beside the window at one corner of the great drawing-room--“I had supposed that _I_ would be reckoned among--” “Oh, don’t take me up in that way, Tabitha! Of course, I reckoned you--you know that well enough--that is, you count and you don’t count, for you are like one of us. Besides, I was thinking of people of my own age. There are some few nice girls here, but they are never frank with me as they are among themselves; I suppose because they are always thinking that I am rich. And how many young men do I know? Say ten, and I always think I can see dollar-marks shining in their eyes whenever I look at them. Certainly they have nothing else inside their heads that would shine.” “I am sure you exaggerate their--” “Oh, no, Tabitha! Don’t be sure of any such thing. They couldn’t be exaggerated; they wouldn’t bear it. Candidly now, can you think of a single man in the place whom you would like to hear mentioned as entertaining the shadow of a hope that some time he might be--what shall I say?--allowed to cherish the possibility of becoming the--the son-in-law of my mother?” “I didn’t think your mind ran on such--” “And it doesn’t,” broke in the girl, “not in the least, I assure you. I put it in that way merely to show you what I mean. You can’t associate on terms of equality with people who would almost be put out of the house if they ventured to dream of asking you to marry them. Both sides are at a disadvantage. Don’t you see what I mean? There is a wall between them. That is why I say we have no friends here; money brings us nothing that is of value; this isn’t like a home at all.” “Why, and everybody is talking of how much Thessaly has improved of late years. And quite nice people coming in, too! They say the Bidwells, who already talk of building a second factory for their button business--they say they moved in very good society indeed at Troy. I’ve met Mrs. Bid-well twice at church sociables--the stout lady, you know, with the false front. They seem quite a knowable family.” Kate did not reply, but drummed on the window-pane and watched the fierce quarrels of some English sparrows flitting about on the frozen snow outside. Miss Tabitha went on with more animation than sequence: