Ruth also had urged her to withdraw from any active part in the wedding, strengthening her advice with the assurance that when a friendship began to decline it ought to be abandoned at once.

There was only her grandmother to go to, and at first she did not find her at all interested in the trouble.

She had just had a dispute with her milkman, was inclined to give him all her suspicions and all her angry words--"an impertinent, cheating creature," she said; and then Ethel had to hear the history of the month's cream and of the milkman's extortion, with the old lady's characteristic declaration: "I told him plain what I thought of his ways, but I paid him every cent I owed him.

Thank God, I am not unreasonable!" Neither was she unreasonable when Ethel finally got her to listen to her own serious grievance with Dora.
"If you will have a woman for a friend, Ethel, you must put up with womanly ways; and it is best to keep your mouth shut concerning such ways.

I hate to see you whimpering and whining about wrongs you have been cordially inviting for weeks and months and years." "Grandmother!" "Yes, you have been sowing thorns for yourself, and then you go unshod over them.