both aunts were in the midst of their respective services, and the cook, who was intensely religious, engaged in preparing dinner, she and her old grandmother played pinocle.  However, although Annie played cards very well, it was only with her relatives.  She had never been allowed to join the Fairbridge Card Club.  She never attended a play in the city, because Aunt Jane considered plays wicked.  It was in reality doubtful if she would have been permitted to listen to Lydia Greenway, had that person been available.  Annie’s sole large recreation was the Zenith Club, and it meant, as she had said, much to her.  It was to the stifled young heart as a great wind of stimulus which was for the strengthening of her soul.  Whatever the Zenith Club of Fairbridge was to others, it was very much worth while for little Annie Eustace.  She wrote papers for it, which were astonishing, although her hearers dimly appreciated the fact, not because of dulness, but because little Annie had written them, and it seemed incredible to Fairbridge women that little Annie Eustace whom they had always known, and whose grandmother and aunts they knew, could possibly write anything remarkable.  It was only Alice Mendon who listened with a frown of wonder, and intent eyes upon the reader.  When she came home upon one occasion, she remarked to her aunt, Eliza Mendon, and her cousin, Lucy Mendon, that she had been impressed by Annie Eustace’s paper, but both women only stared and murmured assent.  The cousin was very much older than Alice, and both she and her mother were of a placid, reflective type.  They got on very well with Alice, but sometimes she had a queer weariness from always seeing herself and her own ideas in them instead of their own.  And she was not in the least dictatorial.  She would have preferred open, antagonistic originality, but she got a surfeit of clear, mirror-like peace.

She was quite sure that they would quote her opinion of Annie Eustace’s paper, but that did not please her.  Later on she spoke to Annie herself about it.  “Haven’t you something else written that you can show me?” She had even suggested the possibility, the desirability, of Annie’s taking up a literary career, but she had found the girl very evasive, even secretive, and had never broached the subject again.

As for Margaret Edes, she had never fairly listened to anything which anybody except herself had written, unless it had afforded matter for discussion, and the display of her own brilliancy.  Annie’s productions were so modestly conclusive as to apparently afford no standing ground for argument.  In her heart, Margaret regarded them as she regarded Annie’s personality, with a contempt so indifferent that it was hardly contempt.

She proceeded exactly as if Annie had not made such a fervent disclaimer.  “The Zenith Club is the one and only thing which lifts Fairbridge, and the women of Fairbridge, above the common herd,” said she majestically.