Although Amy may have had in mind the vague, unsympathetic world in general, when she said “they,” I think that she more particularly meant Brenda, whom she knew to be a person unlikely to approve of a scribbling girl. Now although Amy prided herself on her independence, and although she would not have gone out of her way to gain any one’s favor, she found herself unexpectedly anxious to stand well with Brenda. She was strongly drawn to Brenda, perhaps because the latter was so unlike any one else she had ever known. Brenda seemed so free from care, so bird-like almost, in her way of flitting from one enjoyment to another, that, without envying her, Amy often wished that she could get herself to take life more as Brenda did.
“But then how can I?” she would say, a little sadly. “Brenda can do anything that she wishes at the minute she wishes to do it. No one ever interferes with her.”
Conscience here asserted itself, and Amy continued, “Of course no one ever interferes with me. I know that mamma has always tried to let me have everything that we can afford. But then that is just it,—what we can afford. Sometimes we are able to afford so little. There’s hardly a girl along the shore who has n’t a wheel; why, even the daughters of the mechanics at the Mills have them! Then there’s cousin Joan, she is a great trial to me. I don’t suppose mother realizes it. But I get very tired reading to her, and carrying her meals upstairs, and—” when Amy reached this pitch in her reflections, she was almost ready to cry or to write a poem. A poem
