Gert Northrup was rather a weird looking sort of a specimen, the other girls in town thought. While at highschool she had no chum, no fellow, and didn't seem to mind. Now and then when some awkward, queerly dressed girl came in from the country to go to highschool, Gert would stand around the hall and talk with her for a week or so, and walk home from school with her, but she made no lasting friendships. Tall, flat, angular of hip and shoulder, with hair and eyes undecisively light brown and blue, and dresses that always hung straight about her lank limbs, there was nothing in her manner to indicate that she was dissatisfied with her make-up or her existence.
Her mother sold cakes to the town bakery and would take in stitching work when she got the chance, though she wasn't much of a needlewoman. Both of them were the sort of nondescript beings which just seems to come into existence without traceable origin of family line, or of distinct nationality.
