The Bread-winners | Page 8

stood straight and terribly tall, he thought. She spoke with that
fluent clearness of girls who know what they want, and used words he
had never met with before out of a newspaper. He felt himself no match
for her, and ended the discussion by saying: "That's all moonshine--you
shan't go! D'ye hear me?" but he felt dismally sure that she would go, in
spite of him.
Even after he had given up the fight, he continued to revenge himself
upon his wife for his defeat. "We've got to have a set of gold spoons, I
guess. These will never do for highfliers like us." Or, "Drop in at
Swillem's and send home a few dozen champagne; I can't stummick
such common drink as coffee for breakfast." Or, "I must fix up and
make some calls on Algonkin Av'noo. Sence we've jined the Upper Ten,
we mustn't go back on Society." But this brute thunder had little effect
on Mrs. Matchin. She knew the storm was over when her good-natured
lord tried to be sarcastic.
It need hardly be said that Maud Matchin did not find the high school
all her heart desired. Her pale goddess had not enough substantial
character to hold her worshipper long. Besides, at fifteen, a young girl's
heart is as variable as her mind or her person; and a great change was
coming over the carpenter's daughter. She suddenly gained her full
growth; and after the first awkwardness of her tall stature passed away,
she began to delight in her own strength and beauty. Her pride waked at
the same time with her vanity, and she applied herself closely to her
books, so as to make a good appearance in her classes. She became the
friend instead of the vassal of Azalea, and by slow degrees she found
their positions reversed. Within a year, it seemed perfectly natural to
Maud that Azalea should do her errands and talk to her about her eyes;
and Miss Windom found her little airs of superiority of no avail in face
of the girl who had grown prettier, cleverer, and taller than herself. It
made no difference that Maud was still a vulgar and ignorant girl--for

Azalea was not the person to perceive or appreciate these defects. She
saw her, with mute wonder, blooming out before her very eyes, from a
stout, stocky, frowzy child, with coarse red cheeks and knuckles like a
bootblack, into a tall, slender girl, whose oval face was as regular as a
conic section, and whose movements were as swift, strong, and
graceful, when she forgot herself, as those of a race-horse. There were
still the ties of habit and romance between them. Azalea, whose brother
was a train-boy on the Lake Shore road, had a constant supply of light
literature, which the girls devoured in the long intervals of their studies.
But even the romance of Miss Matchin had undergone a change. While
Azalea still dreamed of dark-eyed princes, lords of tropical islands, and
fierce and tender warriors who should shoot for her the mountain eagle
for his plumes, listen with her to the bulbul's song in valleys of roses, or
hew out a throne for her in some vague and ungeographical empire, the
reveries of Miss Maud grew more and more mundane and reasonable.
She was too strong and well to dream much; her only visions were of a
rich man who should love her for her fine eyes. She would meet him in
some simple and casual way; he would fall in love at sight, and
speedily prosper in his wooing; they would be married,--privately, for
Maud blushed and burned to think of her home at such times,--and then
they would go to New York to live. She never wasted conjecture on the
age, the looks, the manner of being of this possible hero. Her mind
intoxicated itself with the thought of his wealth. She went one day to
the Public Library to read the articles on Rothschild and Astor in the
encyclopedias. She even tried to read the editorial articles on gold and
silver in the Ohio papers.
She delighted in the New York society journals. She would pore for
hours over those wonderful columns which described the weddings and
the receptions of rich tobacconists and stock-brokers, with lists of
names which she read with infinite gusto. At first, all the names were
the same to her, all equally worshipful and happy in being printed,
black on white, in the reports of these upper-worldly banquets. But
after a while her sharp intelligence began to distinguish the grades of
our republican aristocracy, and she would skip the long rolls of obscure
guests who figured at the: "coming-out parties" of thrifty shop-keepers
of fashionable ambition, to revel among the genuine swells whose

fathers were