Gertrude Atherton 
Sisters-in-Law 
A Novel of Our Time

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The long street rising and falling and rising again until its farthest crest high in the east seemed to brush the fading stars, was deserted even by the private watchmen that guarded the homes of the apprehensive in the Western Addition. Alexina darted across and into the shadows of the avenue that led up to her old-fashioned home, a relic of San Francisco’s early days, perched high on the steepest of the casual hills in that city of a hundred hills.<br><br>She was breathless and rather frightened, for although of an adventurous spirit, which had led her to slide down the pillars of the verandah at night when her legs were longer than her years, and during the past winter to make a hardly less dignified exit by a side door when her worthy but hopelessly Victorian mother was asleep, this was the first time that she had been out after mid night.<br><br>And it was five o’clock in the morning!<br><br>She had gone with Aileen Lawton, her mother’s pet aversion, to a party given by one of those new people whom Mrs. Groome, a massive if crumbling pillar of San Francisco’s proud old aristocracy, held in pious disdain, and had danced in the magnificent ballroom with the tire less exhilaration of her eighteen years until the weary band had played Home Sweet Home.<br><br>She had never imagined that any entertainment could be so brilliant, even among the despised nouveaux riches, nor that there were so many flowers even in California.