Rachel looked at the pretty, yellow-haired child, and wondered if she realized how different her "wide, wide world" was likely to be from Katherine's or Helen Chase Adams's--or Rachel Morrison's. To some of the Clan Harding meant everything they had ever known in the way of culture and scholarly refinement, of happy leisure and congenial friendship. It was comforting somehow to find that girls like Betty and the B's, who had everything else, were just as fond of Harding and were going to be just as sorry to leave it. Rachel never envied anybody, but she liked to think that this life that was so precious to her meant much to all her friends. It made one feel surer that pretty clothes and plenty of spending-money and delightful summers at the seashore or in the mountains did not matter much, so long as the one big, beautiful fact of being a Harding girl was assured. All this flashed through Rachel's mind much more quickly than it can be written down. Aloud she said cheerfully, "Well, we have one whole year more of it."