BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK
I
With the Merryman girls economy was a fine art. Money was spent by them to preserve the family traditions. Nothing else counted. Everything was sacrificed to the gods of yesterday.
Little Anne Merryman had shivered all her short life in the bleakness of this domestic ideal.
"Why can't I have butter on my bread?" she had demanded in her long-legged schoolgirl days, when she had worn her fair hair in a fat braid down her back.
The answers had never been satisfying. Well-bred people might, Amy indicated, go without butter. Their income was not elastic, and there were things more important.
"What things? Amy, I'm so hungry I could eat a house."
It was these expressions of Anne's about food which shocked Amy and Ethel.
"I'd sell my soul for a slice of roast beef."
"Anne!"
"Well, I would!"
"I—I don't see how you can be so ordinary, Anne."
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