the kitchen; she knew others who had not; and to
speak for them had thus become with her a literary
mission. To be in truth literary had ever been her
dearest thought, the thought that kept her bright
little nippers perpetually in position. There were
masters, models, celebrities, mainly foreign, whom
she finely accounted so and in whose light she in
geniously laboured; there were others whom, how
ever chattered about, she ranked with the inane, for
she was full of discrimination; but all categories
failed her they ceased at least to signify as soon
as she found herself in presence of the real thing,
the romantic life itself. That was what she saw in
Mildred what positively made her hand a while
tremble too much for the pen. She had had, it
seemed to her, a revelation such as even New
England refined and grammatical couldn't give;
and, all made up as she was of small neat memories
and ingenuities, little industries and ambitions,
mixed with something moral, personal, that was still
more intensely responsive, she felt her new friend
would have done her an ill turn if their friendship
shouldn't develop, and yet that nothing would be
left of anything else if it should. It was for the sur
render of everything else that she was, however,
quite prepared, and while she went about her usual
Boston business with her usual Boston probity she
was really all the while holding herself. She wore
her " handsome " felt hat, so Tyrolese, yet some
how, though feathered from the eagle's wing, so

[[120]]

p119 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p120w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p121

v?