She had been consumed by the
passion of sympathy; it had crumpled her into as many creases as an old
glazed, distended glove. She had been laughed at, but she never knew it;
she was treated as a bore, but she never cared. She had nothing in the
world but the clothes on her back, and when she should go down into the
grave she would leave nothing behind her but her grotesque,
undistinguished, pathetic little name. And yet people said that women
were vain, that they were personal, that they were interested! While
Miss Birdseye stood there, asking Mrs. Farrinder if she wouldn't say
something, Olive Chancellor tenderly fastened a small battered brooch
which confined her collar and which had half detached itself.
VI
"Oh, thank you," said Miss Birdseye, "I shouldn't like to lose it; it
was given me by Mirandola!" He had been one of her refugees in the old
time, when two or three of her friends, acquainted with the limits of
his resources, wondered how he had come into possession of the trinket.
She had been diverted again, after her greeting with Doctor and Mrs.
Tarrant, by stopping to introduce the tall, dark young man whom Miss
Chancellor had brought with her to Doctor Prance.
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