Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

“ Benedicta admired her father beyond measure, and agreed with him that the only self-respecting thing for them was to hide their shameful poverty from the rest of the world; but he was fifty, and she was only twenty-three, so that sometimes she was not able to find quite the same satisfaction in solitary pride that he did. She kept up the tradition splendidly, but she didn't always relish it.
For instance, when that Wilkinson girl had come to see her, uninvited and unencouraged, she had found it difficult to be courteously disagreeable every instant. ”

“ Benedicta was growing rather angry.
“Not good blood,” she said. “Not family and traditions.”
“But, see here!” he interposed. “Haven't you ever heard or read how the people we came from—the old Millers and the Dumalls—got what we're so proud of now? They bought all they ever had. They often paid with their lives, and always with the hardest, most dangerous kind of service. After they'd come to this country and cleared their land, they had to defend it. All the Dumalls who amounted to anything were fighters in one way or another—not necessarily soldiers, but men who held their own. ”

“ Wilkinson left them alone. Benedicta knew that she ought to talk and be gracious and entertaining, but she completely lacked practice. Young Dumall made no effort whatever, but sat looking at the dancers in the next room, not enviously or wistfully, but in a calm and thoughtful way.
“Don't you care for it, either?” he asked suddenly.
That “either” pleased Benedicta. It seemed to place her with Dumall in another and superior world. It made her feel that she really didn't care for dancing; so she said:
“No.”
“Sometimes I think people have forgotten how to enjoy themselves,” he went on. ”

“ When she came down to dinner, she had perhaps a little too much poise. The Wilkinsons all kept on being kind, because it was natural to them, and because they knew all about the Millers and understood Benedicta; but the other guests saw in her nothing but a very stiff, cool, silent girl in a dowdy frock, and they didn't like her.
There were two girls and three others, whom Nan called “boys,” but who were what Benedicta considered young men, and very frivolous ones. Three men and four girls!
“Of course, I'm the extra one,” she thought. “It doesn't matter to me, of course.” ”

“ I wish I was old—old, like father. Then I wouldn't care!”
“Here's some one else who doesn't care for dancing,” remarked Mrs. Wilkinson, and beckoned to a newcomer who had strolled casually in through the open French window. “It's Francis Dumall. You know the Dumalls, don't you?”
The history of the Dumalls had been familiar to Benedicta from her infancy. Like the Millers, they had come down in the world; but not sadly and slowly like the Millers, or generation by generation. Paul Dumall had caused the disaster alone and unaided, and had brought down his family with a crash. ”

“ Benedicta was a little nettled at this.
“Of course they're very nice, and all that,” she answered; “but they're not at all our sort.”
“That's our misfortune,” declared Francis. “Mr. Wilkinson made money because he worked hard and used his wits. Our sort of people wouldn't work, and thought it a fine thing not to have any common sense. I'm not proud of being poor—and I'm not going to stay poor!”
“There are better things in life than hard work and common sense,” observed Benedicta stiffly. ”

“ She was simply Miss Benedicta Miller, from the old Miller place, and the Millers had ceased to be interesting long before she was born.
They had been rich, but now they were poor. They were very tiresome about it, too, keeping up a moldy, lamentable sort of state in their dilapidated house, turning up their noses at every one new and friendly, and being frightfully sensitive toward all the “old” people who offered them any courtesy. ”

“ Another and a better fairy interfered, and arranged that, instead of death, an enchanted sleep should overtake the princess; and so it happened. In vain the royal parents prohibited distaffs. Curses are very, very hard to avoid, and the poor, lovely girl did find a distaff, and did prick her finger, and did fall asleep, and so did every other living creature in the palace with her, to stand or sit or lie just where they were for I don't remember how many years.
Benedicta had nothing to do with fairies, and she wouldn't have known a distaff if she had seen one ”

“ The landscape, too, was uninspiring—a straggling, neglected garden, and a stretch of fields which had once been part of the Miller estate, but which had been first rented and then sold to farmers who did not object to working. ”

“ Young Dumall looked at her.
“I don't think you know what you're undertaking, Benedicta,” he said. “If you're going to come until I don't need you, it's a life job!”
“Do run along and get your lunch!” replied Benedicta, dignified in spite of very flushed cheeks. “I—I believe a job was just what I always wanted, Francis!”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1928. ”

“ She was thinking of nothing but Francis Dumall, the knight, the adventurer, the man determined to do something worth doing. She could imagine nothing in the modern world quite splendid enough for him to do. It was brave to be an aviator, but it wasn't important enough. A statesman? ”

“ Everybody respects him and likes him. Nan thinks he's splendid. He is splendid! He's risen above his disadvantages, and I haven't. I've let myself be so miserable about being poor that I've neglected everything else. ”