Maud Hemingway went to college, and so would she.  Of the minor accessories of wealth she thought not so much.  She looked at her hands, which were very small and as delicately white as flowers, and reflected with a sense of comfort, of which she was ashamed, that she would not need ever to stain them with leather now.  She looked at the homeward stream of dingy girls from the shops, and thought with a sense of escape that she would never have to join them; but she was conscious of loving Abby better, and Maria, who had also entered Lloyd’s.  Abby, when she heard the news about Vassar, had looked at her with a sort of fierce exultation.

“Thank the Lord, you’re out of it, anyhow!” she cried, fervently, as a soul might in the midst of flames.

Maria had smiled at her with the greatest sweetness and a certain wistfulness.  Maria was growing delicate, and seemed to inherit her father’s consumptive tendencies.

“I am so glad, Ellen,” she said.  Then she added, “I suppose we sha’n’t see so much of you.”

“Of course we sha’n’t, Maria Atkins,” interposed Abby, “and it won’t be fitting we should.  It won’t be best for Ellen to associate with shop-girls when she’s going to Vassar College.”

But Ellen had cast an impetuous arm around a neck of each.

“If ever I do such a thing as that!” said she.  “If ever I turn a cold shoulder to either of you for such a reason as that!  What’s Vassar College to hearts?  That’s at the bottom of everything in this world, anyhow.  I guess you’ll see it won’t make any difference unless you keep on thinking such things.  If you do—­if you think I can do anything like that—­I won’t love you so much.”

Ellen faced them both with gathering indignation.  Suddenly this ignoble conception of herself in the minds of her friends stung her to resentment.  But Abby seized her in two wiry little arms.

“I never did, I never did!” she cried.  “Don’t I know what you are made of, Ellen Brewster?  Don’t you think I know?  But after all, it might be better for you if you were worse.  That was all I meant.”

Ellen, one afternoon, set out in her pretty challis, a white ground with long sprays of blue flowers running over it, and a blue ribbon at her neck and waist, and her leghorn hat with white ribbons, and a knot of forget-me-nots under the brim.  She wore her one pair of nice gloves, too, but those she did not put on until she reached the corner of the street where Cynthia lived.  Then she rubbed them on carefully, holding up her challis skirts under one arm.