And at the high school, when Susan
scored in a recitation or in some dramatic entertainment, Ruth
would sit with bitten lip and surging bosom, pale with jealousy.
Susan's isolation, the way the boys avoided having with her the
friendly relations that spring up naturally among young people
these gave Ruth a partial revenge. But Susan, seemingly
unconscious, rising sweetly and serenely above all pettiness--
Ruth's hatred deepened, though she hid it from everyone, almost
from herself. And she depended more and more utterly upon Susan
to select her clothes for her, to dress her, to make her look
well; for Susan had taste and Ruth had not.
On that bright June morning as the cousins went up Main Street
together, Susan gave herself over to the delight of sun and air
and of the flowering gardens before the attractive houses they
were passing; Ruth, with the day quite dark for her, all its
joys gone, was fighting against a hatred of her cousin so
vicious that it made her afraid. "I'll have no chance at all,"
her angry heart was saying, "so long as Susie's around, keeping
everybody reminded of the family shame." And that was a truth
she could not downface, mean and ungenerous though thinking it
might be. The worst of all was that Susan, in a simple white
dress and an almost untrimmed white straw hat with a graceful
curve to its brim and set at the right angle upon that wavy dark
hair, was making the beauty of her short blond cousin dim and
somehow common.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42