Frances Hodgson Burnett 
Mere Giraud’s Little Daughter 

In this moving short story from Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of The Secret Garden, a French family finds its social status zooming upward due to a daughter’s marriage into an upper-class clan. But the salt-of-the-earth friends and neighbors of the Giraud family are deeply skeptical of what they see as brazen social climbing — and they aren’t shy about expressing their displeasure.