The Heart of the People; A Picture of Life as It Is To-Day

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Gladys' disposition could have an intimate friend. As Mr. Chubb had during Mr. Armytage's lifetime been second in authority in the business, and since the founder's death had been in supreme control, it naturally followed that his wife and daughter should move in practically the same circle of society as the Armytages. Mrs. Chubb was a quiet home body who never forgot her simple New England rearing, during which she used to pride herself on her thrifty methods of housekeeping. As her husband's position in life advanced and they could afford to keep first one and then several servants, she would constantly lament that she could find nothing for her busy hands to do. She afterwards, however, found out that she had more than her hands full in trying to rear her daughter Alicia, and in acting as a sort of chaperon to the motherless Gladys. The latter treated her with the good-humored familiarity that one extends to a faithful, motherly housekeeper, while Alicia laid down the law which her mother was expected to implicitly obey, and this Mrs. Chubb had done ever since Alicia at the tender age of ten decidedly showed that she had a mind of her own. That was twelve years ago, and now at twenty-two years of age she had reduced her mother to such a state of helpless servitude to her whims that the dazed and bewildered old lady would have tried to fetch the moon down from the sky if Alicia had expressed a desire for it. One of the laws laid down by Alicia for her own as well as for her mother's guidance was to be and keep on intimate social terms with the Armytages. She had the same music and dancing teachers, went to the same fashionable ladies' seminary, and, by making herself generally useful to the young heiress, found herself always invited to the children's and young folks' parti..