or less to
conclude as to the attitude of the other. Perhaps she herself a little
even fell into the custom of pursuit in occasionally deviating only for
gentlemen from her high rigour about the stamps. She had early in the
day made up her mind, in fine, that they had the best manners; and if
there were none of them she noticed when Captain Everard was there, there
were plenty she could place and trace and name at other times, plenty
who, with their way of being "nice" to her, and of handling, as if their
pockets were private tills loose mixed masses of silver and gold, were
such pleasant appearances that she could envy them without dislike.
_They_ never had to give change--they only had to get it. They ranged
through every suggestion, every shade of fortune, which evidently
included indeed lots of bad luck as well as of good, declining even
toward Mr. Mudge and his bland firm thrift, and ascending, in wild
signals and rocket-flights, almost to within hail of her highest
standard. So from month to month she went on with them all, through a
thousand ups and downs and a thousand pangs and indifferences. What
virtually happened was that in the shuffling herd that passed before her
by far the greater part only passed--a proportion but just appreciable
stayed. Most of the elements swam straight away, lost themselves in the
bottomless common, and by so doing really kept the page clear. On the
clearness therefore what she did retain stood sharply out; she nipped and
caught it, turned it over and interwove it.

CHAPTER VI

She met Mrs. Jordan when she could, and learned from her more and more
how the great people, under her gentle shake and after going through
everything with the mere shops, were waking up to the gain of putting
into the hands of a person of real refinement the question that the shop-
people spoke of so vulgarly as that of the floral decorations. The
regular dealers in these decorations were all very well; but there was a
peculiar magic in the play of taste of a lady who had only to remember,
through whatever intervening dusk, all her own little tables, little
bowls and little jars and little other arrangements, and the wonderful
thing she had made of the garden of the vicarage. This small domain,
which her young friend had never seen, bloomed in Mrs. Jordan's discourse
like a new Eden, and she converted the past into a bank of violets by the
tone in which she said "Of course you always knew m