Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE NKW PUPIL Cicely was now fully launched upon the delightful community life of a college town. Since the reception, and the stream of visits that followed it, she was a duly incorporated member of that charmed circle where brains and breeding are the only social coin, and money is viewed solely as a prosaic necessity,— like underwear, to be made use of in its proper place, and not to be mentioned in public. Promptly voted a valuable acquisition, she was welcomed on all sides with even more than the usual warmth of this warm-hearted body; her progress from circle to inner circle, until she reached the inmost centre of exclusiveness, was comet-like in its brevity; and her peers in age and position, the instructors' and assistant professors' wives, observed her with envy not untinged by awe. Cicely herself, however, was far from appreciating her good fortune. She had been fed all her life on cake, and now had no perception of the superfine quality of this wholesome bread and butter. In the glittering world where she had fluttered away the first part of her brief career, money was equally non-existent, being so omnipresent as to be taken for granted,— and it is an undoubted fact that it is pleasanter to ignore money because of a surfeit than because of a dearth:— while as for breeding and brains, of the former there had always been an embarrassment, and with the latter she had never concerned herself one way or the other. This strange spectacle of brave women employing abilities that might Lave directed great establishments in such humdrum cares as keeping the children clothed and the board spread, and in the greater task of achieving frugality without sordidness, filled her only with impatient pity; and the many men who had sacrificed opportunities of brilliant commer... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.