Forrest Crissey

“ And you won't be, either—never! never! never! When you grow up there'll be somebody to know how it feels and to understand that 'little' girls can want to go to picnics an' things as much as girls that have just let down their dresses, an' that giggle and whisper about boys an' . . ."
But Hester's assertive motherings suddenly ended in a startled "Oh!"—and she found herself looking up into the azure, smiling eyes of a young woman who stood hesitatingly in the gap of the hedge, holding up the skirt of a flowing morning dress of wonderful fabric and fashion. ”

“ Jack Dowling, the American Beauty, the Chum of the Duchess,' could turn a town topsy-turvy in the way that the old General's daughter has. But I tell him that a young woman with all her wealth and brains and beauty who has made London and Paris and New York take notice can do most anything with Strawberry Point."
And Hester, picking up scraps about the trimming-table, listened with a glowing and secret joy that she could not wholly keep from her earnest face. Her mother's hand reached out and smoothed back the loose coils of black hair that swung forward about her face as she stooped. ”

“ John Stanley Dowling desires the pleasure of Miss Hester Elizabeth Dart's presence at one o'clock luncheon this sixth day of September."
There was a choke in the voice of the neglected sister as she paused a moment. Then she caught wildly at the one remaining straw of hope.
"Look inside again, Hess. There may be another there—oh, joy! There is! There is! There is! Read it quick."
From the smaller envelope Hester drew forth another card. Silently Nell read:
"Dearest Playmate,—Please come—and stay all day. ”

“ Dillingham, "they certainly are enormously rich. I heard that the General's mine turns out three thousand dollars a day. But I do wish that Mrs. Jack Dowling wasn't quite so exclusive. So far as I know, there isn't a woman in Strawberry Point that she's spoken to since she came back—not one!"
"It seems hardly human," returned the banker's wife, "for a young woman to shut herself away so—even if she has been brought up abroad and is used to titled society. ”

“ She is half child, half woman, and her smile is a thing to warm frozen hearts."
As Hester slowly arranged Isabel Marie in her bed and drew down flaps of carpet, her ardent heart was filled with a rare and almost supernal glory. The daughter of the General, the mistress of the Great House, was her playmate! What story, of all she had ever heard or read, could compare with this wonderful thing that had happened to her—Hester Elizabeth Dart—and at the very moment when Nell and Kate and Belle had given her the crudest cut that she had yet known? They couldn't hurt her any more ”

“ Jack Dowling, who could have been a countess or anything like that if she'd been a mind to?"
"Isn't it splendid?" answered Hester, with a quick glance at her staring sister. "It all began the very day when Nell and the girls ran off to the picnic and left me. You don't know how lovely and beautiful and—"
"But you must get ready," suddenly interrupted the mother. "I've simply got to go to the shop; Mrs. Gray is coming for her hat this afternoon. Nell will help you dress. If she doesn't she will be among those missing from Kate Wyckoff's party! ”

“ Hester's cheeks flamed scarlet: she had been caught playing with a doll—and what girlish shame is quite equal to that of being discovered "doll playing" after one has passed that mysterious meridian of adolescence charted as "too old for dolls"? Now her childish weakness was blazoned before the eyes of Mrs. Jack Dowling!
Mrs. Jack Dowling? A princess is a poor figure by which to suggest the dizzy altitude of distinction that this name marked in the feminine world of Strawberry Point. The mere fact—as Hester well knew—that Mrs. ”

“ And soon she realized that her secret joy was constantly to be fed by hands that knew not what satisfying meat they offered. In the millinery shop that very evening, as her mother was "trying on," she heard Mrs. ”