l the Stumfoldians she was on
terms of mitigated friendship, and always went to Mrs Stumfold's
fortnightly tea-drinkings. But with no lady there,--always excepting
Miss Baker,--did she find that she grew into familiarity. With Mrs
Stumfold no one was familiar. She was afflicted by the weight of her
own position, as we suppose the Queen to be, when we say that her
Majesty's altitude is too high to admit of friendships. Mrs Stumfold
never condescended--except to the bishop's wife who, in return, had
snubbed Mrs Stumfold. But living, as she did, in an atmosphere of
flattery and toadying, it was wonderful how well she preserved her
equanimity, and how she would talk and perhaps think of herself, as a
poor, erring human being. When, however, she insisted much upon this
fact of her humanity, the coachmaker's wife would shake her head, and
at last stamp her foot in anger, swearing that though everybody was
of course dust, and grass, and worms; and though, of course, Mrs
Stumfold must, by nature, be included in that everybody; yet dust,
and grass, and worms nowhere exhibited themselves with so few of
the stains of humanity on them as they did within the bosom of Mrs
Stumfold. So that, though the absolute fact of Mrs Stumfold being
dust, and grass, and worms, could not, in regard to the consistency
of things, be denied, yet in her dustiness, grassiness, and worminess
she was so little dusty, grassy, and wormy, that it was hardly fair,
even in herself, to mention the fact at all.

"I know the deceit of my own heart," Mrs Stumfold would say.

"Of course you do, Mrs Stumfold," the coachmaker's wife replied. "It
is dreadful deceitful, no doubt. Where's the heart that ain't? But
there's a difference in hearts. Your deceit isn't hard like most of
'em. You know it, Mrs Stumfold, and wrestle with it, and get your
foot on the neck of it, so that, as one may say, it's always being
killed and got the better of."

During these months Miss Mackenzie learned to value at a very low
rate the rank of the Stumfoldian circle into which she had been
admitted. She argued the matter with herself, saying that the
coachbuilder's wife and others were not ladies. In a general way she
was, no doubt, bound to assume them to be ladies; but she taught
herself to think that such ladyhood was not of itself worth a great
deal. It would not be worth the while of any woman to abstain from
having some Mr Rubb or the like, and from being the lawful mother
of ch