During the high-school years she had never once lost her ascendancy among her classmates. She had been so consistently straightforward, so frank in her likes and dislikes, so clever when a controversy arose, that she had maintained the position in which her parents had intentionally placed her through giving her the best of everything and making her conspicuous from the hour in which a tiny ostrich feather had been attached to her quilted hood and she had ridden in state in the first baby carriage the town had ever seen—an arresting affair, ribbed top covered with black oilcloth sheltering the bed which was mounted on two large wheels having wooden spokes and hubs and a tiny third on the front to make it stand alone. The upcurving tongue ended in a cross piece by which Elizabeth, strong-armed with the strength of a prideful heart, dragged this contraption, shining with black paint, gay with gold lines and red and blue morning-glories, after her over the flag-stone and board walks of Ashwater. This was no easy work for a woman of Elizabeth’s natural proportions, but come what might personally, Elizabeth made the daily and hourly task of her life that of seeing that her child came first, and had the best. Mrs. Spellman’s deft fingers had been busy in their spare time for two years at elaborate embroidery preparing against Mahala’s day of graduation and her following advent to the best girls’ school of the land. For the same length of time, she and Mahala had discussed a subject for the valedictory which naturally should fall to Mahala. Her mother had been unable to select anything from the store sufficiently dainty and suitable for a graduation dress. Mahlon had been commissioned to bring something especially fine from the city for this purpose. The best sewing woman the village afforded had been in the house working on the foundations of this dress. When it reached a certain point, Mrs. Spellman expected to finish it herself, ably assisted by Mahala whose fingers had become so deft in time set apart each day for their especial training, that, as a needlewoman, she was expert in the extreme.