Her ambition "to make undying music in the world," to follow in the footsteps of her beautiful grandmother Amanthis, was in itself a reaching-up to one of the family ideals.
When the girls began calling her the Princess Winsome, unconsciously she began to reach up to be worthy of that title also, but when she found that Mary Ware was taking her as a model Maid of Honor, in all that that title implies, she began to feel that a burden was laid upon her shoulders.

She had had such admirers before: little Magnolia Budine at Lloydsboro Seminary, and Cornie Dean at Warwick Hall.

It was pleasant to know that they considered her perfection, but it was a strain to feel that she was their model, and that they copied her in everything, her faults as well as her graces.

They had followed her like shadows, and such devotion grows tiresome.
Happily for Mary Ware, whatever else she did, she never bored any one.
She was too independent and original for that.

When she found an occasion to talk, she made the most of her opportunity, and talked with all her might, but her sensitiveness to surroundings always told her when it was time to retire into the background, and she could be so dumb as to utterly efface herself when the time came for her to keep silent.
A long list of delights filled her first letter home, but the one most heavily underscored, and chief among them all, was the fact that the big girls did not seem to consider her a "little pitcher" or a "tag." No matter where they went or what they talked about, she was free to follow and to listen.