And then Mathilda remembered
very strongly that dirty nasty place that Lena came from and that
Mathilda had so turned up her nose at, and where she had been made
so angry because her mother scolded her and liked all those rough
cow-smelly people.
Then, too, Mathilda would get very mad when her mother had Lena at
their parties, and when she talked about how good Lena was, to certain
german mothers in whose sons, perhaps, Mrs. Haydon might find Lena a
good husband. All this would make the dull, blonde, fat Mathilda very
angry: Sometimes she would get so angry that she would, in her thick,
slow way, and with jealous anger blazing in her light blue eyes, tell
her mother that she did not see how she could like that nasty Lena;
and then her mother would scold Mathilda, and tell her that she knew
her cousin Lena was poor and Mathilda must be good to poor people.
Mathilda Haydon did not like relations to be poor. She told all her
girl friends what she thought of Lena, and so the girls would never
talk to Lena at Mrs. Haydon's parties. But Lena in her unsuffering
and unexpectant patience never really knew that she was slighted. When
Mathilda was with her girls in the street or in the park and would see
Lena, she always turned up her nose and barely nodded to her, and then
she would tell her friends how funny her mother was to take care of
people like that Lena, and how, back in Germany, all Lena's people
lived just like pigs.
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