As if I hadn't to be educated! And then, when the castle fell so
to bits that tourists wouldn't bother with it any more, and nobody but
rats would live in the Paris house unless it was repaired--and poor papa
was killed in a horrid little Saturday-to-Monday war of no importance
(except to people whose hearts it broke)--oh! I believe the cousins were
glad! They thought it was a judgment. That happened years ago, when I
was only fifteen, and though they've plenty of money (more than most
people in the American colony) they didn't offer to help; and mamma
would have died sooner than ask. I had to be snatched out of school, to
find that all the beautiful dreams of being a happy _debutante_ must go
by contraries. We lived in the tumble-down house ourselves, mamma and I,
and her friends rallied round her--she was so popular and pretty. They
got her chances to give singing lessons, and me to do translating, and
painting _menus_. We were happy again, after a while, in spite of all,
and people were so good to us! Mamma used to hold a kind of _salon_,
with all the brightest and best crowding to it, though they got nothing
but sweet biscuits, _vin ordinaire_, and conversation--and besides, the
house might have taken a fancy to fall down on their heads any minute.
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