Page:Good Sports (1919).djvu/20

Rh was plain and austere herself. But just as the book-lined walls of her sparsely furnished living-room might have revealed beauty to him who took down the books from their shelves and read them, so did Aunt Harriet gradually reveal her beauty to Ada. She was a gray woman, tall, gaunt. Her clothes were uninteresting. Her time and money had been spent in beautifying her mind, and the results showed less in the cut of her rough, brown suits than in her intelligent eyes, inspiring conversation, and the atmosphere of good taste that permeated her chaste little house.

When Ada came home she not only perceived the cheap, common appearance of her father's house—the over-supply of drop-lights, newspapers, latest novels, and upholstered arm-chairs—but also she saw the tawdry condition of her own and her sisters' minds. Gropingly she had sought door after door through which she might escape from the stifling atmosphere of powder and paint, and gowns, and hats, and wraps, and scraps upon scraps of papier poudré left here and there—as common in this household as cigar-ashes in a home where men predominated.

But every door she had tried had been locked, and her father refused to give her the keys. It was unjust. He taunted women, called them frivolous, worthless; was ashamed of being the