Ranger.
"Poor Kate!" she said; "all you girls seem to dislike her somehow. Mrs.
West was a somebody from Washington," she added, reflectively, as if
she unconsciously sought in the girl's pedigree some explanation of her
unpopularity.
"Is it so dreadful to come from Washington?" asked Miss Merrivale; and
then wondered if she ought to have said it.
"It is not the coming from Washington," was Mrs. Frostwinch's reply,
delivered in the same faintly satirical manner which she had maintained
throughout the discussion; "it is the being merely a somebody instead
of having a definite family name behind her."
"It is all very well for you to make fun of my old-fashioned notions,
Anna," Mrs. Ranger returned, good-naturedly. "You think just as I do."
"I should be sorry not to think as you do about everything," was the
answer. "And, to be perfectly honest, I can't help being a little
ashamed that a cousin of mine has gone on to the stage. She was always
dreadfully headstrong."
"Has she talent?" asked Mrs. Staggchase.
"Yes, she has talent; but is anything short of genius an excuse for
taking to the boards?"
"I wish I could act," put in Miss Dimmont, emphatically. "I'd go on to
the stage in a minute."
Mrs. Ranger looked shocked and grieved as well.
"My dear," she said, "you can't realize what you are saying. The stage
has always been a hotbed of immorality from the very beginning of
theatrical art, and nothing can reform it.
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