Aunt Mary smiled.

“Because, Honora,” she said, “because I am a person of no importance in Mr. Meeker’s eyes.”

“If I were a man,” cried Honora, fiercely, “I should never rest until I had made enough money to make Mr. Meeker wriggle.”

“Honora, come here,” said her aunt, gazing in troubled surprise at the tense little figure by the mantel.  “I don’t know what could have put such things into your head, my child.  Money isn’t everything.  In times of real trouble it cannot save one.”

“But it can save one from humiliation!” exclaimed Honora, unexpectedly.  Another sign of a peculiar precociousness, at fourteen, with which Aunt Mary was finding herself unable to cope.  “I would rather be killed than humiliated by Mr. Meeker.”

Whereupon she flew out of the room and upstairs, where old Catherine, in dismay, found her sobbing a little later.

Poor Aunt Mary!  Few people guessed the spirit which was bound up in her, aching to extend its sympathy and not knowing how, save by an unswerving and undemonstrative devotion.  Her words of comfort were as few as her silent deeds were many.

But Honora continued to go to the dancing class, where she treated Mr. Meeker with a hauteur that astonished him, amused Virginia Hayden, and perplexed Cousin Eleanor.  Mr. Meeker’s cringing soul responded, and in a month Honora was the leading spirit of the class, led the marches, and was pointed out by the little dancing master as all that a lady should be in deportment and bearing.

This treatment, which succeeded so well in Mr. Meeker’s case, Honora had previously applied to others of his sex.  Like most people with a future, she began young.  Of late, for instance, Mr. George Hanbury had shown a tendency to regard her as his personal property; for George had a high-handed way with him,—­boys being an enigma to his mother.  Even in those days he had a bullet head and a red face and square shoulders, and was rather undersized for his age—­which was Honora’s.

Needless to say, George did not approve of the dancing class; and let it be known, both by words and deeds, that he was there under protest.  Nor did he regard with favour Honora’s triumphal progress, but sat in a corner with several congenial spirits whose feelings ranged from scorn to despair, commenting in loud whispers upon those of his sex to whom the terpsichorean art came more naturally.  Upon one Algernon Cartwright, for example, whose striking likeness to the Van Dyck portrait of a young king had been more than once commented upon by his elders, and whose velveteen suits enhanced the resemblance.  Algernon, by the way, was the favourite male pupil of Mr. Meeker; and, on occasions, Algernon and Honora were called upon to give exhibitions for the others, the sight of which filled George with contemptuous rage.  Algernon danced altogether too much with Honora,—­so George informed his cousin.

The simple result of George’s protests was to make Honora dance with Algernon the more, evincing, even at this period of her career, a commendable determination to resent dictation.  George should have lived in the Middle Ages, when the spirit of modern American womanhood was as yet unborn.  Once he contrived, by main force, to drag her out into the hall.