Lily was very outspoken, particularly
so where she saw cause for disapproval, and above all if she thought
others were assuming too much; and she had on certain occasions so
plainly made known her opinion of some of Grade's assumption, that a
sort of chronic feud had become established between the two, not
breaking out into open hostility, but showing itself in a
half-slighting, half-teasing way with Lily, and with Gracie in a
manner partly scornful, partly an affectation of indifference.
Some six weeks since, at a meeting of the club of the "Cheeryble
Sisters," to which all three little girls belonged, Gracie's
overweening self-conceit and irrepressible desire to be first had led
her into conflict with another of her classmates, Lena Neville, in
which she had proved herself so arrogant, so jealous and ill-tempered
that she had excited the indignation of all who were present. But if
they had known what followed after Gracie had been left alone in the
room where she had so disgraced herself, how would they have felt
then? How she had stood by and seen the source of contention, a
composition, which she believed had been written by Lena, torn to
atoms by a mischievous little dog, withholding her hand from rescuing
it, her voice from warning the dog off from it simply for the
indulgence of that same blind, overpowering jealousy. The destruction
was hardly wrought, when repentance and remorse too late had
followed--repentance and remorse, intensified a thousandfold by after
events on the very same day.
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