"I didn't say that, and I didn't mean that, Kitty. I meant that I didn't want to do what you asked, because it wouldn't be polite or kind."

"Well, it seems to me, Laura Brooks, that you are putting on very ceremonious airs all at once. Didn't you postpone until another day a visit to Amy Stanton last winter, for just such a reason as this,--that you might go to Annie Grainger's when her mother went to Baltimore,--and Amy never thought of its being impolite or unkind."

"But that was different, Kitty."

"Different? Show me where the difference is, please."

"Oh, Kitty, you _know_."

"But I _don't_ know."

Laura's delicate face flushed a little, but after a moment's hesitation she said: "Esther is--is not like Amy Stanton or you; that is, she doesn't live in the same way. The Bodns are poor,--quite poor, Kitty."

"Well, I don't see how that alters the case," still obstinately responded Kitty.

"Now, Kitty, you _do_ see. Esther is shy and sensitive. She doesn't visit the people that we do."

"She doesn't visit _anybody_, so far as I know."

"Yes, that is just it," Laura went on eagerly; "and so you see that when she and her mother have made preparations for company--even one person--it would put them to a great deal of trouble and inconvenience to change the time, and it would be unkind and impolite to ask them to do it."

"How do you know that they have made such unusual preparations for you?"

asked Kitty, sarcastically.

Laura flushed again as she answered: "I didn't mean unusual in one way, but I thought that they didn't often invite company by something that Esther said. When she asked me to fix a day, she told me that her mother wasn't very well, and that they didn't keep a servant."

"Not keep a servant! Not a single one! Why, they must be awfully poor, like common working-people!" exclaimed the young Beacon Street girl, in a wondering tone.

"Esther isn't common, if she is poor," Laura instantly a.s.serted with decision.

"I don't understand how anybody so poor as that should be sent to Miss Milwood's school. I shouldn't think they could afford it," went on Kitty; "why, the place for her is a public school."

"But, Kitty, don't you know that Esther a.s.sists Miss Milwood,--that it is Esther who looks over all the French and German exercises, and makes the first corrections before mademoiselle takes them?"

"Esther Bodn?"

"Yes,--why, Esther, you must have noticed, is very proficient in French and German. She and her mother have lived abroad and here, in French and German families, to prepare her for being a teacher. She has a great natural apt.i.tude, too, for languages."

"How in the world did you find all this out, Laura?"

"I didn't _find it out_, as you call it,--there is no secret about it,--Esther would no doubt have told you as much, if you had got as well acquainted with her as I have."

"I don't see how you came to get so well acquainted with her. She's nice enough, but I could always see that she wasn't like the rest of us,--of our set."

"Like the rest of us! She's just as good as the rest of us, and better than some of us."

"Oh, I dare say," said Kitty, in a patronizing tone.

"She may not be of our set, as you say, Kitty; but when I think of how Maud and Florence Aplin talk sometimes, I don't feel very proud of belonging to 'our set.'"

"Yes, I know, Maud and Flo do brag awfully now and then; but they are nice girls, and it is a nice family, mamma says."

"Every one seems to say that about them, and I've often wondered what they meant. I'm sure Mr. Aplin isn't very nice. He has no end of money, I know, but he can be so rude, and Mrs. Aplin is so patronizing. Now, why should they be called such 'nice people'?"

Kitty straightened herself up, put on a very knowing look, and repeated parrot-like what she had heard older persons say,--

"Mrs. Aplin was a Windlow."

"What in the world is a Windlow?" asked Laura, rather sarcastically.

Kitty was a worldly young woman, but she was also full of fun; and this question of Laura's amused her mightily, and with a suppressed giggle she answered demurely: "I think it has something to do with windows. The Windlows were English, and I believe their business was to open and shut the windows in the king's palaces,--perhaps to wash them. This all began ages ago, and it was considered a great honor, a tip-top thing to do, especially when the windows were high up. The honor has descended from generation to generation, and the name with it, I believe. They had some very ordinary name at the start."

The giggle, that had been suppressed up to this point, now burst forth in a shout of laughter, wherein Laura herself joined, exclaiming, as she did so, "Oh, Kitty, you are so ridiculous!"

"Why don't you make a rhyme and say, 'Oh, Kitty, you're so witty'? But, Laura, it is you who are odd and ridiculous, to pretend that you don't know that Windlow is one of the oldest names of one of the oldest families who came over to America in the Mayflower,--regular old aristocrats."

"Now, Kitty, I'm up in my history, if I'm not on this society stuff, and just let me tell you that those first settlers of America who came over in the Mayflower were _not_ aristocrats."

"Oh, Laura, when everybody who can, brags of a Mayflower ancestor! I heard Mrs. Arkwright say to mamma, the other day that the Aplins were of the real old Mayflower blue blood."

"Then Mrs. Arkwright, with the 'everybody' you tell of, doesn't know what history says."

"Why, I'm sure I thought that was history."

"Well, it isn't. Last year I went with my father to Plymouth, and he took me to the famous rock where the Mayflower pilgrims landed, and afterward he gave me a lovely book called 'The Olden Time,' by Edmund Sears, that told me all about the pilgrims,--who they were, and why they came over, and everything, and I remember it said in this book that the Plymouth pilgrims were constantly confounded--those were the very words--with the Puritans who came over nine years later to Ma.s.sachusetts."

"But Plymouth is in Ma.s.sachusetts."

"Yes, I know, but it wasn't in that day. It was simply Plymouth Colony.

The Mayflower sailed by Cape Cod into Plymouth Bay. They named the bay Plymouth, as they named the town Plymouth, for the old Plymouth in England."

"Did they name Cape Cod too?"

"No; that name was given years before by Captain Gosnold, an early voyager."

"Oh, I know, he caught such a lot of codfish there. I wish he'd never discovered the place; I hate codfish. But go on with your history lesson, Miss Brooks. I haven't any Mayflower ancestors, and so I'm more than resigned to have them taken down from their aristocratic peg."

"But they were lovely people,--lovely; kind and good to everybody, whether they believed as they did or not, for they had been persecuted themselves in the old country they had left for their opinions, and they meant that every one in the new country should worship as they pleased.

They were very intelligent people, too, though, as this history says, 'from the middle and humbler walks of English life.' It was the men who came over to Ma.s.sachusetts Bay and settled in Boston who were the aristocrats, and they were not nearly so liberal and generous as the Plymouth men. The head ones were stiff and overbearing, and meddled and interfered with people who didn't think as they did, and made a lot of strict little laws about all sorts of things, so that the name of 'Puritan' and 'puritanical' came to be used for anything that was bigoted and narrow-minded; and these names have stuck to all New England, and papa says that at this day people mix up things, and think that the Mayflower people and Boston people were all alike."

Kitty Grant gave a little hop, skip, and jump here, to Laura's astonishment. "Oh, Laura, it's such larks," she cried out. The two girls were walking down Beacon Street on their way home from school, and Laura looked about her to see what Kitty had so suddenly discovered to call out such an exclamation. Seeing nothing unusual, she asked, "_What_ is such larks?"

Kitty laughed. "Oh, Laura, can't you see that this little fact you have pulled out from this tangled-up colony business, this dear dreadful little fact that the Mayflowers were not aristocrats, only--what does your history book say? Oh, I have it--'from the middle and humbler walks of English life;' not blue Mayflowers, but common colors--can't you see that it will be such larks for me to use this little fact like a little bombsh.e.l.l, when Mrs. Arkwright, or Maud, or Flo Aplin, or any of these Mayflower braggers begin to hold forth?"

"Why, Kitty, I thought you liked Maud and Flo!"

"I do when they don't give me too much Mayflower. I've always thought, and so has mamma, that this was their one fault,--that if it wasn't for that, they would be pretty near perfect; and now--and now, Brooksie, I shall proceed to be the means of grace that shall make them paragons of perfection. Oh, Laura, you're a treasure with that head of yours crammed full of facts, and I'll forgive you anything for this last little fact, even for neglecting me for that little Bodn girl!"