And"-- she laughed--"if I were giving a party I'd not want to ask her--though I might do it for fear she'd feel left out." "Don't you feel--left out ?" Susan shook her head.

"I seem not to care much about going to parties lately.

The boys don't like to dance with me, and I get tired of sitting the dances out." This touched Ruth's impulsively generous heart and woman's easy tears filled her eyes; her cousin's remark was so pathetic, the more pathetic because its pathos was absolutely unconscious.
Ruth shot a pitying glance at Susan, but the instant she saw the loveliness of the features upon which that expression of unconsciousness lay like innocence upon a bed of roses, the pity vanished from her eyes to be replaced by a disfiguring envy as hateful as an evil emotion can be at nineteen.

Susan still lacked nearly a month of seventeen, but she seemed older than Ruth because her mind and her body had developed beyond her years--or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say beyond the average of growth at seventeen.

Also, her personality was stronger, far more definite.