, it seemed, been born in Canada, and her parents had no
possessions in the mother-country, and yet she always called it "home."
This was evidently a tradition.

Sophia, who had come from England a little tired of the conditions
there, and eager for a change, felt the pathetic sameness of the
discontent wrought by surfeit and by famine.

"Yet," said she, "it is a relief to the mind to feel that one lives in a
country where no worthy person is starving, and where every one has a
good chance in life if he will but avail himself of it. It seems to make
me breathe more freely to know that in all this great country there is
none of that necessary poverty that we have in big English towns."

Little answer was made to this, and Sophia went on to talk of what
interested her in English politics; but found that of the politics, as
well as of the social condition, of the country she adored, Miss Bennett
was largely ignorant. Her interest in such matters appeared to sum
itself up in a serene belief that Disraeli, then prominent, was the one
prop of the English Constitution, and as adequate to his position as
Atlas beneath the world. Now, Sophia cherished many a Radical opinion of
her own, and she would have enjoyed discussion; but it would have been
as difficult to aim a remark at the present front of her new
acquaintance as it would be for a marksman to show his skill with a
cloud of vapour as a target. Sophia tried Canadian politics, owning her
ignorance and expressing her desire to understand what she had read in
the newspapers since her arrival; but Miss Bennett was not sure that
there was anything that "could exactly be called politics" in Canada,
except that there was a Liberal party who "wanted to ruin the country by
free trade."

Sophia ceased to take the initiative. She still endeavoured to respect
the understanding of a girl of whom she had heard that when her father's
fortunes were at a low ebb she had retrieved them by good management and
personal industry--a girl, too, who through years of toil had preserved
sprightliness and perfect gentility. What though this gentility was
somewhat cramped by that undue importance given to trifles which is
often the result of a remote life; it was still a very lovely thing, a
jewel shining all the more purely for its iron setting of honest labour.
Sophia fought with the scorn that was thrusting itself into her heart as
she listened when Miss Bennett now talked in a charming way ab