With the cleverness born of desperation, Mrs. Sampson solved her
difficulty by asking Miss Catherine Penwick to fill the vacant place.
Miss Catherine Penwick was the last forlorn and fluttering leaf on the
bare branches of a lofty but expiring family tree. The Penwicks had
come over in the Mayflower, or at a period yet more remote, and the
acme of the prosperity and social distinction of the name was
coincident with the second administration of President Washington.
Since that time its decadence had been steady; at first slow, but later
with the accelerating motion common to falling bodies, until nothing
remained of the family revenues, little but a tradition of the family
greatness, and none of the race but this frostbitten old lady, poor and
forsaken in her desolate old age.
Miss Penwick was one of the learned ladies of her generation, a fact
which counted for less in the erudite day into which it was her
misfortune to linger than in those of her far-away youth. She struggled
against the tide with pathetic bravery, endeavoring to eke out some
sort of a livelihood by giving feeble lectures on Greek art, which no
living being wished to hear, or could possibly be supposed to be any
better for hearing, but to which the charitably disposed subscribed
with spasmodic benevolence. The poor creature, with her antique curls
quivering about her face, yellow and wrinkled now, its high-bred
expression sadly marred by the look of anxious eagerness which comes of
watching, like the prophet, for the ravens to bring one's dinner, was
but too glad to be invited to sit at any table where she could get a
comfortable meal and be allowed to play for the moment at being the
grand lady her ancestresses had been in reality.
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