e Downings, the Burtons, and the Larkins comprised
Willowfield society, and without its society Willowfield lost its
significance, the observing male visitor may not have been far wrong. If
mistakes were made in Willowfield society, they were always made by the
masculine members of it. It was Mr. Stornaway who had at one time been
betrayed into the blunder of inviting to a dinner-party at his house a
rather clever young book-keeper in his employ, and it was Doctor Burton
who had wandered still more glaringly from the path of rectitude by
taking a weak, if amiable, interest in a little music teacher with a
sweet, tender voice, even going so far as to request his family to call
upon her and ask her to take tea with them. It was Mr. Downing, who, when
this last incident occurred and created some sensation, had had the
temerity to intimate that he thought the Doctor was entirely in the
right; though, to be sure, he had afterwards been led to falter in this
opinion and subside into craven silence, being a little gentleman of
timorous and yielding nature, and rather overborne by a large and
powerful feminine majority in his own household. Mr. Larkin was, it is to
be regretted, the worst of the recreant party, being younger and more
unmanageable, having not only introduced to public notice certain
insignificant though somewhat talented persons in the shape of young men
and women who talked well, or sang well, or wielded lively pens, but had
gone to the length of standing by them unflinchingly, demanding civility
for them at the hands of his own family of women in such a manner as
struck a deadly blow at the very foundations of the social structure. But
Mr. Larkin--he was known as Jack Larkin to an astonishing number of
people--was a bold man by nature and given to deeds of daring, from the
fatal consequences of which nothing but the fact that he was a member of
one of the "old families" could have saved him. As he was a part--and
quite a large part--of one of these venerable households, and, moreover,
knew not the fear of man--or woman--his failings could be referred to as
"eccentricities."

"Mr. Larkin," Mrs. Stornaway frequently observed, with long-suffering
patience, "is talented but eccentric. You are never quite sure what he
will do next."

Mrs. Stornaway was the head and front of all Willowfield's social
efforts, and represented the button factory with a lofty grace and
unbending dignity of demeanour which were the admi