Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/368

. In a month or two there'd be asparagus and strawberries. Say! Yes, he was eloquent.

Anne was hungry. There had been a meagre dinner that evening. The other girls had not seemed to care. But Anne had cared.

"I'm starved," she had said as she had surveyed the table. "Let's pawn the spoons and have one square meal."

"Anne!"

"Oh, we're beggars on horseback"—bitterly—"and I hate it."

It was her moment of rebellion against the tyranny of tradition. Amy had had such a moment years ago when her mother had taken her away from school. Amy had a brilliant mind, and she had loved study, but her mother had brought her to see that there was no money for college. "You'd better have a year or two in society, Amy. And this craze for higher education is rather middle-class."

Ethel's rebellion had come when she had wanted to marry a round-faced chap who lived across the street. They had played together from childhood. His people were pleasant folks but lacked social background. So Ethel's romance had been nipped in the bud. The round-faced chap had married another girl. And now Amy at thirty and Ethel at twenty-five were crystallizing into something rather 362