"I had endeavored to bear that in mind," Littleton retorted with spirit. "I believe that either of these plans would give you a house which would be handsome, interesting and in good taste."
"It does not seem to me that there is anything unique about any of them," said Mrs. Parsons, with a cold sniff intended to be conclusive. Nor did Littleton's efforts to explain that elaboration in a private residence was liable to detract from architectural dignity and to produce the effect of vulgarity fall upon receptive soil. The rich man's wife listened in stony silence, at times raising her lorgnette to examine as a curiosity this young man who was telling her--an American woman who had travelled around the world and seen everything to be seen--how she ought to build her own house. The upshot of this interview was that Littleton was sent away with languid instructions to try again. He departed, thinking melancholy thoughts and with fire in his soul, which, for Selma's sake, he endeavored to keep out of his eyes.
The departure of the Williamses to a smarter neighborhood was a trial for Selma. She nursed the dispiriting reflection that she and Wilbur might just as well be moving also; that a little foresight and shrewdness on her husband's part would have enabled him to sell at a handsome profit the house in which they were living; and that there was no reason, except the sheer, happy faculty of making the most of opportunities, to account for the social recognition which Flossy and her husband were beginning to receive. It had not been easy to bear with equanimity during the last year the ingenuous, light-hearted warblings in which Flossy had indulged as an outlet to her triumphant spirits, and to listen to naïve recitals of new progress, as though she herself were a companion or ladies' maid, to whom such developments could never happen. She was weary of being merely a recipient of confidences and a sympathetic listener, and more weary still of being regarded as such by her self-absorbed and successful neighbor. Why should Flossy be so dense? Why should she play second fiddle to Flossy? Why should Flossy take for granted that she did not intend to keep pace with her? Keep pace, indeed, when, if circumstances would only shape themselves a little differently, she would be able speedily to outstrip her volatile friend in the struggle for social preferment.