'No, I don't,' she answered simply, looking straight up at me. 'That was
how it all commenced. My father kept the livery stable. But of course it
wouldn't matter--keepin' a livery, I mean--if your family was all
right. Jeff Randolph kept the grocery. Being a Randolph, of course he
could. But my name's Smithson--Sadie Virginia Smithson--and my
grandfather was a carpenter. I'm a dressmaker myself. That's the reason
they didn't elect me to the Laurel Literary Society.' She paused a
moment. 'I reckon you wouldn't understand about the Laurel Literary
Society?' she questioned a trifle wistfully.
'Perhaps not,' I admitted.
'Well, it's a literary society, of course. The members read papers, and
all like that, but it's a heap more'n that. Belonging to it kind of
marks a person out in Johnson's Falls and gives 'em the--the--well, I
reckon you'd call it the _entray_ to all the best homes in town. If you
don't belong--well, I reckon it came kinder harder on me, not belonging,
than it did on some of the others. Why, I'd have said the girls that
started it were my very best friends. We'd played together as children,
and I called 'em all by their first names, and they _knew_ I was just as
smart, an' liked readin' an' all that just as well as any of 'em did. So
when I wasn't asked to join--well, it just seemed to knock me right out.
I wasn't but nineteen then, an' when you're young things hurt more, I
reckon. Anyhow the slight of it got just fixed in my mind, an' I made a
kind of a vow that I'd belong to that society some day if I _died_ for
it. And then, after a while it came to me, maybe if I could just save
money enough to go abroad, they'd ask me to read a paper before the
society when I got back, 'cause mighty few people have traveled much
from our town.--Well,' she looked thoughtfully away at the blue water,
many an' many a night I've put myself to sleep thinking how it would be
when I read that paper. You know, when you're young and kind of unhappy
and slighted, how you make up things to sort of comfort yourself?'