R XII

The New England town of Willowfield was a place of great importance. Its
importance--religious, intellectual, and social--was its strong point. It
took the liberty of asserting this with unflinching dignity. Other towns
might endeavour to struggle to the front, and, indeed, did so endeavour,
but Willowfield calmly held its place and remained unmoved. Its place
always had been at the front from the first, and there it took its stand.
It had, perhaps, been hinted that its sole title to this position lay in
its own stately assumption: but this, it may be argued, was sheer envy
and entirely unworthy of notice.

"Willowfield is not very large or very rich," its leading old lady said,
"but it is important and has always been considered so."

There was society in Willowfield, society which had taken up its
abiding-place in three or four streets and confined itself to developing
its importance in half a dozen families--old families. They were always
spoken of as the "old families," and, to be a member of one of them, even
a second or third cousin of weak mind and feeble understanding, was to be
enclosed within the magic circle outside of which was darkness, wailing,
and gnashing of teeth. There were the Stornaways, who had owned the
button factory for nearly a generation and a half--which was a long time;
the Downings, who had kept the feed-store for quite thirty years, and the
Burtons, who had been doctors for almost as long, not to mention the
Larkins, who had actually founded the Willowfield _Times_, and kept it
going, which had scarcely been expected of them at the outset.

Their moral, mental, and social gifts notwithstanding, there was nothing
connected with the Stornaways, the Downings, the Burtons, and the Larkins
of such importance as their antiquity. The uninformed outsider, on
hearing it descanted upon, might naturally have been betrayed into the
momentary weakness of expecting to see Mr. Downing moulder away, and
little old Doctor Burton crumble into dust.

"They belong," it was said, with the temperateness of true dignity, "to
our old families, and that is something, you know, even in America."

"It has struck me," an observing male visitor once remarked, "that there
are a good many women in Willowfield, and that altogether it has a
feminine tone."

It was certainly true that among the Stornaways, the Downings, the
Burtons, and the Larkins, the prevailing tone was feminine; and as the
Stornaways, th