"'Oh, Elsa?' I sniffed. 'I can believe anything of Elsa. _You_ couldn't be so horrid and snobbish!'
"'She doesn't mean to be horrid, or know she is; she speaks of her mother with tears in her eyes. It is only that she has gone into another world from them, and wants to stay there. I don't want to go into any other world than my father's and the others'. I don't want any better taste than they have! I want better taste and I want them to have it, but I want us all to get it together. Whatever I get I want to share with them. I couldn't if I went away. I used to think I could bring it all back in a lump; but I know better now. You can't pot culture and give it away as you choose; you have to grow it from the seed. What I am afraid of is that they should not get what I get. So far they have; why, aunty knows more of Virgil from hearing me translate aloud than I do myself; and dad is wonderful in geometry, and he has taught _me_ to love Charles Lamb, whom he loved just from the extracts in the literature. First he bought the Essays, then I bought him the Letters. It is that way with so many things. You know'--she laughed--'you know we have some long-legged Fra Angelico angels instead of the pictures of Lincoln and Grant; they are in other frames, which my father made, and hang in the hall; and the Rogers groups have gone up-stairs, and, Connie, Oscar and dad and I have had a real artist paint a pastel of Uncle Jed as a present for aunty, and we have it in the parlor now; and nobody's feelings are hurt; we were all pleased together. That is the right way. I can't take any other way. Not even to be with you, Connie. No, dear, I can't go.' I am afraid I made it harder for her with my selfish grief, and her father almost frantically opposed the sacrifice, he who was always so tranquil; and Oscar was angry, and Ned cried. Oh, we gave poor Nannie a frightful quarter of an hour; but she did not go."
"What became of her? How did it turn out in the end?" asked the youngest member.
"Did her conduct make a breach between you?" Mrs. Waite showed the dawn of disapproval on her brow.
"Surely not. But in my next year we went abroad unexpectedly, on account of my mother's health. We stayed four years; and while we were away, my grandfather died, and the house here was sold. At first we both wrote often; but, as the years went by, insensibly we wrote less often. Both of us, I suppose. That same film of constraint was over Nannie's letters that had been over her manner before. Then it went away. This time it came, and did not go away. Then the letters ceased altogether. When I--when I found I was going to marry Mr. Curtis, I wrote Nannie the very first letter. There was no answer. I wrote again--not once, but many times. After a long while my letters came back to me, unopened, with the post-office inscription, 'Not to be found.' I wrote to Elsa, who was home. I asked her for Nannie's address; for some word about her. She wrote back that the Marshes had sold their house after Oscar's trouble, to raise money for his defense; and they had all moved away, she believed, to Dakota, but she didn't know where. She said Nannie avoided everybody."